


Lodestone

by Salomonderiel



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brushing over contextual homophobia, Crusades, M/M, Nicky's POV, Slow Burn, there's a war who's got time for that shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26163550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salomonderiel/pseuds/Salomonderiel
Summary: If these dreams were a test, Nicolo feared it was a test he was failing. Every sight he was given of this man, the less concerned he was for the man's religion, and the more he saw the similarities between them.The story between the first death, and the first kiss.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 284





	Lodestone

**Author's Note:**

> I realised that these two must have dreamed of each other before they met, and immediately decided to write my own view of what their meeting was like. These fuckers wouldn't get out of my head. 
> 
> WARNING - there's hinted depression and suicide. Very little, but be aware. 
> 
> HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
> 
> The Crusades:  
> The Christians took Antioch in 1098. They arrived in Jerusalem June 1099 and had taken it by 7th July. There wasn't years for Nicolo and Yusuf to hash this out. This story is set at the siege of Arqa. By this point, the various nobles leading the crusades had split into factions, and would often lay sieges to towns purely for money, supplies, and the sake of having a victory. The siege of Arqa was led by the rather self-centred Raymond of Toulouse. It started on 14th Feb 1099 (I shit you not), and ended when the Crusaders eventually gave up two months later. During this time raids were sent to the nearby Tripoli, which led to some of the most gruesome battles of the crusades. Tripoli eventually paid Raymond of Toulouse to leave them alone. 
> 
> Sexuality:  
> At this time, in Europe, more and more people were condemning all sexual activity committed for any reason other than procration - obviously, sodomy is a pretty big example, since you can't even accidentally procreate. However, I know that in some places like England it wasn't officially listed as a major sin yet at this point. And the idea of homosexual as an identity, in England at least, wasn't around until the Victorians. 
> 
> Nationality:  
> Nicolo is from Genova, and as such his native language would probably have been a Ligurian language, as Italy was technically various states at this time. But that's complicated and involved more explanation than I could give, though, so he's Italian.   
> Yusuf is canonically Maghrebi. As such, he is from northern Africa. The term at the time for this was Moor - still is today, if you look at architecture of the Mediterranean coast, there's so many beautiful Moorish towns from when land kept changing hands. They probably did, in their European ignorance, call him Saracen, as this became a general term for Muslim 'infidels'. I've tried to even this by having Nicolo referred to as a Frank as often as I could.   
> (Someone ask me about Yusuf's inspiration for Will Shakes' writing of Othello: The Moor of Venice, and how Yusuf feels about it)
> 
> That's all folks. Please enjoy. If you see any historical or cultural errors, please correct me. I want to learn!

The first time Nicolo died, he wasn’t even aware of it. He wasn’t aware of anything, really – how could pay attention to any one thing, amidst the chaos that surrounded him? Everything hurt in some way or other. His hands were slipping with blood and sweat on the hilt of his sword, his helmet had fallen to cover one of his eyes, screams and yells were echoing through the layers of cloth and chain-mail that were meant to keep his helmet in place, until it all became one mess of noise he couldn’t distinguish any single voice within. And as for what he could see – dust, for the most part. People were just silhouettes behind the clouds of dust, some of them red, some rusted metal, some wearing cloth – though any pattern on cloth overlays were long since bleached, torn, stained.

One second he was looking at a man, trying to place him as an ally or enemy before hacking at him with his longsword, and then there was a pain in his neck sharper than anything else he’d felt before –

And then he was looking at the same battlefield, but not through his own eyes. He watched as someone tugged desperately at the bodies around him, trying to find someone still alive to pull to safety, but so many were dead. Nicolo watched as he pulled at one arm and it pulled away, the deep gash separating the shoulder tearing, revealing ribs and lungs as the flesh ripped in the man’s grasp and he staggered back, horror contorting his face, and it was only then Nicolo realised this man was a Saracen –

With a gasp, a breath that wrenched itself from his throat, Nicolo was once again looking out of his own eyes. The battlefield had not fallen silent – it wouldn’t be silent for days – but the clashes of swords and rending of armour had lessened. The fight had moved, and left him behind. All that he was left with was bodies, some still alive, most not.

He reached a shaking hand up to his neck, and felt blood. His hand stuck to his skin where he pulled it away, and as he looked down he saw the red river that was staining his surcoat. No, not just blood – an arrow, an arrow he could _feel_ _pushing_ _itself out of his neck as he watched._

The blood had been his. The arrow had been in his neck. He had been left with the dead and dying.

His hands shook as he pushed over the body of a crusader next to him, tugging free a sword which was probably his. He gripped the pommel, using the blade to scramble up onto his knees. He pressed his forehead against the warm metal, trying desperately to steady his breathing.

Eventually, he glanced up to the heavens. The sun was close to setting – more time had passed than he’d thought.

“Mio Dio,” he breathed, “What the _fuck_ just happened?”

  
***

  
At some point in the last few batshit months, Nicolo had ended up in the regiments of Raymond of Toulouse. The few soldiers he had known from Genova had been divided by circumstance, by the mess of amalgamations that formed the various ‘armies’ involved in the crusade. At the beginning there had been defined groups, friends riding with friends, the passion of the work and the anticipation of seeing the country their God had been born in, lived in, died in. But several months in, several battles in, your family wasn’t who you’d left home with but who you’d survived with, and the armies felt less like the regiments of the Church and more like a rabble of desperate men. After the first village had been ransacked for food, after they’d have to choose their own survival over the survival of people who had committed no sin other than being nearby and unarmed, the sense of who you had been became replaced by a hollow body driven by nothing more than the promise you’d made and the orders you’d received.

The point was, Nicolo had found himself following the orders of a French nobleman who was probably a bit crazy and was leading a siege on Arqa for reasons neither Nicolo nor anyone he spoke to could quite understand.

The siege was still new enough that when Nicolo finally staggered back to the camp, most of the tents were still being erected. His blood-soaked surcoat and oversized helmet had been abandoned with the bodies he’d woken up amongst and the arrow that had been in his neck was now clenched in his hands, but that earned him nothing more than a cursory glance from the lucky souls who had been stuck back here building the living quarters.

Where his own tent would be, who he would share it with, Nicolo didn’t know yet. He’d inevitably find a few of his brothers who he knew well enough, and find where his few sparse belongings had been dumped. But for now there was one place that was always easy enough to find in the crusader’s camp, a place where Nicolo would always be able to rest.

He stopped to clean himself in pail of water first – just the blood dried on his hands, face and neck. His chainmail would require a full scrubbing later. But for now, even if it was only made of cloth, it felt wrong to enter a house of God with his skin stained with blood. Even if this time it was mostly his own.

While he had technically stopped being a priest once he joined the armies of the Crusade, there were some habits that never left you. And it seemed that even with the supposed certainty of a Holy Mission behind them, the soldiers never stopped needing advice and counsel. Sometimes, just a shoulder to cry on.

Some mantles were harder to abandon than others.

As such, he was recognised and left in peace by the few clergymen that were already inside the large tent, setting up the few trappings of God’s glory they had managed to keep with them. A few candlesticks (though they’d long had to forgo the proper beeswax candles for cheaper ones made of tallow), a few ornate crosses, a small vessel of holy water, and, of course, the bible on its bejewelled stand. It might be no cathedral, but even here the Catholic ministers would never allow their fellow man to forget the glory of their God.

The amount of times Nicolo had watched the soldiers around him waste away from starvation, and wanted to sell the crosses and candlesticks for the loaves of bread the gold and jewels would buy them…

They had not yet put up the rows of pews, or what furniture they could get to emulate pews, so Nicolo knelt before the mock-altar and the Bible on its stand, grasped the arrow between his hands and prayed.

One day, he might receive some concrete answers. Apparently, it wouldn’t be today.

After a long time, after the cold of the night finally seeped its way into the tent, after the other men around him finally left for their night’s rest, Nicolo got to his feet.

When he found a bed that he could reasonably claim as his own, he found his thoughts kept circling to the man he’d seen, trying to save anyone around him. And when his eyes closed, he saw him again, a very mirror of Nicolo himself – a man knelt before his God, asking for answers.

  
***

  
He was woken from his dreams of the praying Saracen by the sensation of the earth shaking. A rumbling not unlike thunder, a pressure that shook you to your core, the sound of things crashing apart – Ah. So, Arqa had catapults, then.

Nicolo stared at the shaking cloth above him until he heard the other soldiers in his tent start to move. He rubbed his face with his hands, and somehow found a spot of blood he’d missed yesterday. He flicked at it with a nail, until the fragile shards of red flew off to vanish against the muddy, dusty floor beneath him.

Eventually, he pushed himself upright. Most of the others had gone, presumably to do their duty, but Guiscard was still sat on his pallet, watching the world through the tent’s entrance.

“Hey,” Nicolo called out, trying to be heard over the cacophony of sounds echoing from outside. His French had improved drastically in the past few months. “Has the smith set up shop yet? I need a new helmet.”

Guiscard glanced at him, and shook his head. “No – but the quartermaster’s tent is somewhere to the east. He might have a spare one you can have.”

A spare one? That was how Nicolo had got the last ill-fitting helmet. Well, without the funding of an estate or noble family behind them, the spares were what most of the soldiers had to make do with. Being clergy might earn Nicolo respect, but it didn’t get him priority at the smithy.

He glanced outside the tent again, as another catapult impact shook the ground. The safety provided by the cloth tent was non-existent at best, but it was better than having clear sky above you. Forgoing the trip to the quartermaster for now, Nicolo picked up the chainmail he’d abandoned the night before and dug through his pack for a suitable cloth.

Later, he’d return to the temporary chapel and listen to the confessions of the soldiers who felt pain, fear, anger, guilt, doubt. He’d listen to the graphic descriptions of their actions, and what had been acted upon them, listen to all the questions about how any end could justify these means.

But for now, he’d sit here in silence, cleaning blood from his armour as the camp literally fell apart around him.

  
***

  
He kept dreaming of the Saracen. Sometimes the man was sleeping. Sometimes he was praying, eating, laughing. Sometimes just walking through the streets of what was, presumably, the town of Arqa. Nicolo wondered if this made him the first Crusader to see inside the town’s walls.

Then he remembered these were just dreams.

Once, he saw the man suit himself up in his armour, his chainmail and surcoat. He heard, after he woke up, of the shock attack that had emerged from the city gates in the depths of the night, had decimated the first few tents and destroyed some of the army’s catapults, before vanishing back into the city.

Nicolo was wandering around the camp after that, just waiting to see where he could be useful. Occasionally a doctor would send him for supplies, sometimes he would assist with carrying a wounded man. Food and water needed to be moved, as did materials for rebuilding the tents.

He stumbled across a man he knew, at one point. Benetto, a fellow Italian, Tuscan. He was cradling an arm wrapped in bandages, and even from where he stood Nicolo could smell the rotten stench that told him that, at the very least, that arm would be gone by sunset.

Nicolo walked up to him and rested a hand on the man’s shoulder. Benetto started at the touch, turning bloodshot, terrified eyes up at Nicolo.

“Come on,” Nicolo said gently. “Let’s get you to the chapel.” It was something his old mentor had said, the first time a dying man had entered their cathedral. Once a doctor’s work had finished, a priest’s work had just begun.

  
***

  
The first week outside Arqa he spent more time in the makeshift chapel than on the battlefield. Not just because there wasn’t much an army could do against the town’s solid brick walls – there were skirmishes often enough. But for every fight there were a hundred confessions to take, a hundred pardons to give. Large groups of soldiers were being sent to the surrounding villages, farms. More were sent to seize the transport lines to the docks. He’d heard that small bands would soon be sent south to raid the nearby city of Tripoli.

It wasn’t the travelling to Jerusalem that was the hard part. It was what you had to do to get there. Every day, Nicolo heard stories of how homes and families had been killed in the name of their crusade, and every day he had to find a convincing way to say it was all justified in the eyes of their Lord. It was a lot easier to believe that Jerusalem needed to be claimed and protected when it was some distant place. Actually being here made it… difficult.

Not that Nicolo didn’t feel conviction, didn’t believe that Jerusalem had to be saved. He did. He just had to spend more and more time communing with God to remind himself of that.

Which was why he found himself in the chapel at midnight again, when he heard muted shouting outside.

There had been other raiding attempts by the Saracens in Arqa, but none of them had got much further than the first. The chapel had, so far, been safe, so it had never occurred to Nicolo to bring armour or weapons with him. It was a house of _God_ , for goodness’ sake.

But as he heard another cut-off scream, he started to think maybe that was another religious rule he’d have to start to bend.

As always, there were other men in the chapel. Old men, men who’d followed purely to inspire and comfort the soldiers, no battle experience, no blood on their hands. For the first time since he’d met them, Nicolo saw fear in their eyes. He had to find a weapon. Of course he could find a weapon. This was a war camp – you could _always_ find a weapon.

For a second he glanced at the solid metal candlesticks, but changed his mind. Far too short to be a decent weapon against swords.

Resolute, he headed out of the makeshift chapel, intent on finding something to defend the place with.

He didn’t get very far.

Even in the moonlight, he could see that the figure before him wasn’t one of the Christian soldiers he shared this camp with. Chainmail, yes, surcoat, yes, but his sword was curved in a way the European longswords never were. He wore a dark cloth over half his face, but his eyes were bright and fast. No sooner than the man’s gaze had landed on Nicolo than the curved sword pierced through his tunic, his skin, his sternum.

It was as though his breath was drawn from him through that new hole in his skin, rendering his mouth useless. He gasped, hands reaching forwards and grabbing at anything, anyone, to help him stay still. He didn’t want to fall. Every movement he made he felt in the metal tearing his muscles, shattering his bones. They don’t tell you that you can feel it, all the way through, the organs the blade pulls with it as it moved.

Nicolo’s hands landed on the shoulders of the man who had killed him as he gasped for the breath that never came. He stared at him, mind void of all thoughts, save for how horrified the man seemed to be.

There was a shock in his eyes that was familiar to Nicolo.

This was the man he saw in his dreams.

Was this the reason he had been allowed to live before, Nicolo wondered, as the man gently lowered him to the floor, as the sword was wrenched from his core, pulling blood and muscle and skin with it. Was he kept alive, only so he could be killed by this man?

The man with the concerned eyes stayed with him while he died, but was gone when he awoke.

It was still night, the man was gone, and once again Nicolo was waking to find his clothes covered in swathes of blood that were his, and his alone. The once cream (no, dusty-brown) tunic was stained a vibrant scarlet that princes would pay good money for, were it not for the gaping hole and bloody stench. The skin beneath it, however, was unmarked.

There was no denying it this time. Nicolo had died, perhaps for the second time, and something had not allowed him to stay dead.

He made no motion to get to his feet, quite content to stay lying on the ground for a few minutes longer. He stared up at the cross haphazardly painted onto the canvas of the chapel. “Was this you?” he asked, gesturing languidly at his unmarked chest.

He didn’t get a response. He hadn’t expected one.

  
***

  
The following morning, Nicolo was told that there had been a small raiding party that had attempted to destroy their stocks of food. He said he’d heard the noise, but had found nothing when he left the chapel to investigate. He didn’t quite know why he’d lied, except to avoid questions he didn’t have the answers to.

The chapel had been left untouched.

When he went to see the bodies of the Saracens, all laid out before the walls of Arqa, he couldn’t help but cross himself and commend their souls. The reaction was such an instinct, that it didn’t occur to him until later that the commendation he had been taught to provide was not one they would want. What did the Saracens say for their dead? Did they even pray for their souls, or leave them to face the consequences of their life?

He was unaware of the strange looks he was earning as he examined each body in turn, too busy trying to imagine each face before him alive and animated, not blank and lifeless. By the time he reached the end, he was sure. The man who killed him, the man who kept being shown to him, was not here.

Guiscard was waiting for him by the edge of the camp, arms crossed. “What was that about, Father?”

“Everyone deserves the chance at final rites,” Nicolo muttered, as he walked past. “And I’m not a Father, Guiscard.”

“Of course not.”

  
***

  
Benetto died of the infection in his arm. His armour and belongings were divided up between the soldiers who needed it. His helmet was offered to Nicolo, who still hadn’t found a new one. He turned it down. Instead, he agreed to ride with the next assault on Tripoli

  
***

  
Nicolo liked the horses. They were quiet and proud, but once you earned their trust – something easily bought with food – they became nothing more than oversized puppies. It was almost worth coming on Tripoli assaults purely for the company of the horses and the joy of riding again, after months spent almost entirely on foot.

“I told you,” Guiscard said with laughter, as Nicolo buried his face in against the soft, comforting neck of the horse. “It’s good to get away from the camp.”

It was. It was even better to get away from a freshly dug grave, when any hope of bloody vengeance came with less and less cost to Nicolo’s own body. 

There was camp near the city, they knew. Something small, not the size of the full siege army. A place to sleep and eat and, more importantly, to allow the horses to recover. A day’s ride out, with the coast in view for a lot of it.

It felt almost like peace, until their commander pulled them to a halt.

The soldiers out front began to talk in low voices. Guiscard looked back at him, confused, but Nicolo thought he’d seen the problem. On the far horizon was something, a smudge or shadow, just enough in this otherwise empty landscape to identify a group of travellers.

And from the bustle this was causing the men in charge, Nicolo would hazard a guess they weren’t carrying a Christian pennant.

“Looks like we’re going to have a fight,” Nicolo muttered to Guiscard, as their commander turned his horse around and started gesturing.

Guiscard sighed, unhooking his shield from where it was attached to his saddle. “Oh sweet joy. And I was having such a nice day. Have you got a new helmet yet?”

“No.”

“Much practise fighting on horseback?”

“No, none.”

Guiscard shot him a scathing glare, and Nicolo replied with a smile. He had a new cause for confidence that Guiscard knew nothing of, and he almost felt bad for causing his friend concern. “Then stay back, and only fight back when engaged,” Guiscard said, pulling his sword from his scabbard and swinging it loosely.

Nicolo wasn’t lying. He had never fought on horseback before, but he was an experienced rider, and not too bad with his sword. He hoped the two translated into the one skill.

His first thought in his battle on horseback was how much faster the enemy arrived.

It seemed like mere moments between them being nothing but a mirage on the horizon, and the first horrendous screeching clashes of metal on metal. The horse beneath him skittered at the screams and battle cries, some in a tongue Nicolo recognised and some not. Not taking his eyes from the battle he reached his hand down to soothe the horse. “Me too, girl. Me too.”

He watched one of the Christian soldiers die before even landing a blow, and then there was no question of staying back. They were evenly matched for numbers, but in small groups there’s nowhere to hide. Whether it was through good aiming or sheer luck Nicolo didn’t know, but he felt the first swing of his sword shatter the chainmail of the man before him, the blade imbedding itself between his ribs. The Saracen started to slip from his saddle and Nicolo managed to catch him in the neck with the tip of his sword as the body fell. For a second he felt a flash of empathy, a phantom feeling of the arrow that had pierced his throat not two weeks ago.

Nicolo went to swing at the next Saracen and felt his sword hit something distinctly more solid than a chainmail coat.

He saw the curved sword blade blocking him, before he looked up into a face that he _knew_.

His instincts were strong enough to overcome the shock, but the Saracen’s were not. Nicolo parried and sliced before the Saracen could reconcile the sight of a man he’d killed – and without his lower face covered, wasn’t his face so much more expressive?

For example, Nicolo could see every ounce of suffering on his face when Nicolo’s sword sliced the back of his sword-hand. A cry of pain, and the curved sword dropped to the ground, hilt bloodied.

There was some justice in that. Blood drawn to match Benetto’s. He wondered if this wound would kill this man, like it had killed Nicolo’s friend.

As he watched, and the cut sealed itself over. Like it was never there at all.

Nicolo groaned. “ _Santa Maria, Madre di Dio_ … of course, of course you would be the same…”

The man didn’t know what he was saying, that was for sure. There was panic in his eyes as he reached for a dagger, the only weapon he had left, though that would do nothing against the longswords that surrounded him. His friends were falling or fleeing, and the decision, from where Nicolo sat, was an easy one.

The Saracen turned his horse with a skilled precision, and fled.

To chase after him would be to leave himself open, Nicolo knew, and for a moment he thought it would be worth a death to make himself equal with this man – for what the Saracen’s people had done to all the Christians Nicolo had seen die. To what this man had done to _him_ , for that matter. 

Something tapped his shoulder, and he spun, shocked out of his thoughts. Guiscard was holding out a crossbow and quiver. “You’re a better aim than I am,” the Frenchman said with a blunt honesty.

Nicolo took the bow and loaded an arrow in the mechanism with a practised efficiency. The enemy was leaving even quicker than they had arrived, but not fast enough. Nicolo’s first arrow struck one of the retreating riders in the shoulder, but not the one he had been aiming for.

He ignored the body tumbling to the ground, and took a breath to steady himself before he loosed his second arrow.

It struck the Saracen who had killed him. For a minute it looked like he would stay seated – before he slumped, slipping from a horse who cared nothing that his rider had fallen. The final Saracen was too far ahead to see what had happened to his brothers, and out of reach of the limited range of Nicolo’s crossbow.

“We could go after them?”

Their commander shook his head. “No – they’ll die soon enough. We continue to Tripoli.”

The rest of the soldiers assented without question. Nicolo watched the body in the dust for as long as he could, waiting for it to move, waiting for evidence that this man, too, could survive death.

“Nicolo! Let’s go!”

Nothing.

With a sigh, with his head overflowing with questions to fill his prayers with, Nicolo turned away.

  
***

  
That night, on a rough pallet within sight of Tripoli, Nicolo failed to dream of that man for the first time. Instead, his sleep was interspersed with sights of two riders in some lush environment that made him long for his home. He awoke with a gasp in the black of night, surrounded by restless sleepers having far worse nights than him.

Determined, he rolled over, closed his eyes, and tried again.

  
***

  
He died three more times in the raids on Tripoli. Guiscard died, and like everyone else his friend didn’t come back, no matter how much he shook him, screamed his name. He thought he saw his Saracen in the distance, but by the time he reached him the Crusaders had already overwhelmed them all, leaving nothing behind but hacked-apart bodies and bloodstained dust.

Nicolo had seen such destruction before, had heard stories in the confessions he received, but waking up amidst corpses for the fourth time, having to shrug bloodied, stinking corpses from him before he could see the sunlight – he scrambled through the aftermath of blood and shit and sick, and as soon as he could kneel on solid ground he vomited until it felt like his very guts were trying to leave him.

He staggered to his feet, and found he was unable to look away from the carnage.

Is this what winning looked like?

In the distance, another figure crawled from the wreckage of bodies, staggering and falling over his dead brothers.

He looked back at Nicolo at one point, but made no motion towards him.

Nicolo understood. Now was not the time for it.

And, with a certainty he’d never felt before, Nicolo knew they’d meet again anyway.

  
***

  
He found him on the battlefield a few times in the next few days. There were a few men Nicolo killed that may have been him – it was hard to tell, when everyone had the same streaks of mud and blood, the same helmets, the same red blood.

Twice, it was definitely him. The way the man fought through the crowds to get to him, Nicolo almost smiled as the sword cut through his chainmail to slice his side. He ignored the pain he now knew would be temporary, and carefully swung his sword straight across the man’s guts. He would have watched him fall, but his attention was taken by the scimitar running him through from behind.

He barely had woken up, that time, before the Saracen finished the job, stabbing him through in the hole in the chainmail he had made last time.

It was strange, Nicolo reflected that night as he took to his knees before the cross they had set up in the Tripoli camp, his bloodied, holey surcoat in his hands. There was almost a comfort in knowing the fate the battlefield held for him. Death, resurrection, and a beautiful man.

The next day, the call came for the forces to return to the siege at Arqa. Nicolo thought, I wonder how he will follow me.

  
***

  
The word went around that the attacks on Tripoli had ended because the city’s elite had paid a king’s ransom to Raymond of Toulouse. Whether it was true or not, Nicolo didn’t know. They said the prophet Raymond had thrown his hat in support of had turned out to be a fraud. That he was wasting his time at Arqa when they should be marching on Jerusalem itself.

So many men would ask Nicolo this, ask if it was true. As if Nicolo was invited to the meetings between Raymond of Toulouse and God Himself. I’m not even a _priest_ anymore, Nicolo wanted to tell them, to shake them. What makes you think I know anything about this?

And why aren’t _any_ of you asking about the farms we burned on the way here?

No, that wasn’t fair. Some did. Some would tell him what it felt like to hold a torch to a family home. To kill the man coming at you with an old, rusted scythe, only to realise the body you had made was no more than a boy, now bleeding out at the feet of his screaming mother. So you shut her up, too.

Men like that were the hardest, because Nicolo knew his job was to comfort, but more and more he just wanted to walk away.

Except he couldn’t return to his tent, because there were empty spaces where Guiscard and Benetto used to sleep. Even their pallets had been taken to be repurposed. It was like they had never been there.

But it was alright. Because now they were in the light of the lord.

And the problem there, was that Nicolo finding himself really struggling with everything he’d ever been told about death and the afterlife.

  
***

  
He wasn’t praying, this time. No, tonight it was more about the comfort of being before God, or as near as he could be right now. He was sat on a stool before the ornate Bible, looking at the patterns and intricacies, trying to find God in them as he would find God in the stained-glass and vaulted ceilings of the cathedral back home.

That day, a man had come to him, saying he was scared he had killed a fellow Christian on the battlefield, not noticing the insignias on the surcoat until it was too late. So here Nicolo was, too tired to pray, too scared to try to sleep in case all he saw was the hollow eyes of that man as he confessed.

He hadn’t dreamed of the Saracen since he killed him on the road to Tripoli.

The clergymen whose actual job it was to work here had long gone to their beds. Nicolo’s excuse was that someone had to stay in case they were needed. Though, that’d didn’t mean that when he heard the rustle of the tent’s cloth, he didn’t curse the man disturbing his peace.

He turned, trying to find enough comfort in himself that he could impart it on another, but what he saw – _who_ he saw – stopped his heart still.

In bare chainmail – the plainest, most non-descript outfit you could wear here – was the Saracen. _The_ Saracen. The one he’d dreamed about, the one he’d chased across battlefields, the one who’d skewered him repeatedly – the first time outside _this very fucking tent_ –

His hand reached for the sword that usually hung by his side, but it wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. He was in a house of God.

He didn’t think that would stop this man.

But the Saracen’s hands were equally bare. He was reaching up to take off his helmet, brushing back the mail hood, and suddenly he was just… standing there.

“I cannot fight you here,” Nicolo said carefully in his native Italian. He knew this man would not understand him. He tried to make himself clear by gesturing to the Bible and crosses on the makeshift altar behind him. Disregarding, he thought, the complete absence of armour or a weapon. He would not kill a man before God. Even if God, supposedly, wanted this man and all his kind dead.

But the Saracen just frowned.

Then I guess it’s me, Nicolo thought, sighing, that will be dying in this church. How would it happen? This man had killed him multiple times with a wound to the gut – perhaps that would be it. Or perhaps the Saracen fighter would take advantage of his lack of armour and cut his throat, stab his heart. Something fast that might be seen as mercy.

The Saracen cleared his throat, in a way Nicolo might mistake for awkwardness. “Is it that… Can you understand this?”

And Nicolo just… _gaped_. Because he could.

The man wasn’t speaking Arabic, wasn’t speaking Italian. It was something Nicolo hadn’t heard for years, not since he left his home town, but he knew the words well enough. Sabir, a _lingua franca_ for the Mediterranean basin, used for trading by merchants and, luckily for Nicolo, port towns. Like Genova.

He seemed like he had frozen for too long, because now the man was muttering to himself under his breath in indistinguishable Arabic, running his hand through his hair. He almost made to turn away.

Frantic, Nicolo stepped forwards, hand outstretched, as if – what? Was he going to hold the man here? _Why_ was he so desperate to hold this man here?

“You are lucky, Saracen” he said quickly, trying to annunciate his words carefully – not for the ease of the man opposite, but because after so many years he was not sure of his own pronunciation. “Not many of my brothers here speak the language of traders.”

At that, the Saracen laughed. Something small, a huff of air, but there was no mistaking it nonetheless. “ _I_ am lucky?” he said with disbelief. “You realise how few of the people here speak this, this mangled version of your tongue? You’re lucky I am from the Maghreb, or the only language we would have would be violence.”

Nicolo felt the corner of his mouth twitch, something akin to a smile. “Yes, this – this is preferable.” A thought caught him. “You are not from here? You are from -” his tentative knowledge of the language failed him, and he prayed the word he knew in his own tongue was similar enough to be understood. “Fatimids?”

Surprise, like all other emotions Nicolo had seen this man experience, showed itself so very visibly. “Yes,” he said with a wry smile. “We came to fight the invading Turks. You Franks, you were…”

“An unfortunate consequence?” Nicolo suggested.

There was no denying it this time – the man laughed, something deep and heartfelt, and Nicolo felt himself genuinely smiling for the first time in too, too long.

“So,” the man continued, his face twisting lightly as he thought, a movement which fascinated Nicolo, “I believe I am technically not a Saracen. I believe the word you call us is ‘Moor’.”

The comment startled a burst of laughter from Nicolo. “Should I apologise?”

“It would be a start.”

And there was a _mischief_ there, there were dark undertones, yes, and implications that had been haunting Nicolo for days, but the mischief in the eyes of the man before him had him feeling more at ease than he had in the company of any of the Christian soldiers for miles around.

In the pause, the Maghrebi man raised a hand to his chest. “I am Yusuf al-Kaysani,” he said, bowing slightly as he said it. A polite introduction.

“Nicolo.” He found himself copying the motion, and he was rewarded with a smile. “May I – can I ask you something?”

Yusuf shrugged, edging his way further into the tent to perch on a stool. A tension Nicolo didn’t realise he’d been carrying finally faded away. “I came here with questions, it seems only fair that you can ask some too.”

“When you were here last, when you first killed me-”

Yusuf showed recognition, but no trace of guilt or admonishment. Nicolo didn’t want him to.

“-you knew me, didn’t you? I could see it in your eyes, your shock. You’d seen me before.”

Slowly, Yusuf nodded. “I thought them mere dreams, before I saw you, that night. Nearly scared my soul from me.”

“I saw you too,” Nicolo said, cutting in almost before Yusuf could finish speaking. Yusuf’s gaze fixed on him intently. “In dreams, when I died, I’d see you, what you were doing during the night-”

Yusuf’s eyebrow twitched up, and Nicolo flushed. “Oh, for – you know what I mean, I don’t mean like _that-_ ”

And Yusuf was laughing again, and Nicolo was smiling again. He was sure he’d smiled more this night, with his enemy, than he had since they arrived at Arqa. “I do, I do. I would see you here, most nights,” he said. “This is a, uh-” He cursed under his breath, once again muttering in Arabic. Finally, resigning himself with a wince, he did what Nicolo had done – tried it in his own language. “ _Makan Allah?_ ”

Luckily, if there was one word in Arabic Nicolo knew, it was God. “House of God, yes. Chapel. Or, rather, the nearest we can make out here.” He glanced about himself, to the tattered cloth over the ‘altar’, the Bible on its out-of-place, over-embellished stand, to the damned candlesticks. “It doesn’t really compare to a true cathedral.”

Yusuf nodded. His eyes were fixed on the bible. “I would invite you to come see the mosque we have in Arqa, but…” Nicolo would mistake his tone to be disaffected, where it not that he knew the man well enough to see there were, once more, mischievous undertones.

_Knew the man well enough_. This was the first time he had ever exchanged words with him, yet he already knew his emotions, his mannerisms, better than the men he shared a tent with.

“I can see some problems with that,” Nicolo agreed, and Yusuf smiled again.

It was, Nicolo admitted to himself, a sight he enjoyed.

“The dreams,” Yusuf said suddenly, shocking Nicolo back to reality. “Did they start when you first, ah, died?”

This time, it was Nicolo who laughed at him. “You kill me more than any other man, and now try to be delicate about it?”

Yusuf shrugged, but again showed no signs of apologising.

“Yes,” Nicolo told him. “It was – first attack at Arqa. An arrow to the neck.”

For all their joking, there seemed to be genuine sorrow in how Yusuf looked at him. Concern in the way he looked to Nicolo’s neck, as if to see a mark he knew wouldn’t be there. “For me, it was a – a -”

Faced with a language barrier once again, Yusuf resigned himself to gestures, shoving something forwards with two hands.

“Spear?” Nicolo guessed. “Pike?”

“Yes, that. Same battle. I wasn’t even fighting, I was-”

“You were trying to get the injured to safety,” Nicolo cut in. He remembered. The scene was still as vivid in his mind as when he first saw it.

The way Yusuf looked at him, Nicolo didn’t have the words to describe. “Yes.”

The silence was weighted. At some point Nicolo’s pulse had rocketed, but he couldn’t have said when.

“So,” Yusuf said, eventually, and Nicolo’s pulse jumped. “Do you know why?”

“Know why what?” Nicolo asked thoughtlessly. Then he kicked himself.

“For whatever reason, we cannot die, and I cannot sleep without seeing you,” Yusuf said softly. “I just – want to know why.”

Nicolo could hear the same fears in Yusuf’s voice that he’d been ignoring since the first time. The possibility that this was a punishment, that they had been deemed unworthy to progress from a mortal life to an immortality in God’s light. “I don’t know,” Nicolo admitted. “I can _hope_ that it’s-”

“That we have a purpose?” Yusuf cut in. Nicolo nodded slowly. “But a purpose from who?” Yusuf asked with such a ferocity that for a moment, Nicolo was frightened. “A purpose from _Allah_ , or from whatever it is you call god?” he said, with a dismissive wave and a bitter grimace. “A purpose to protect this land, or destroy it? How can we _both_ have the same purpose?”

Nicolo opened his mouth, but he couldn’t say it. What if their purpose was to stop each other? They had already tried, so many times, so many ways, and never managed it. And Nicolo could not see a monster in the man before him. Not the demon the preachers painted to scare their followers, not the butcher the other soldiers told stories of – not when he’d heard of much worse acts, first hand, from the Christian soldiers he walked with. Not when he’d seen the simplicity and compassion with which this man led his life.

He didn’t need to say it. He could see it on the face of the man before him, the same uncertainty, the same fear, the same hesitation.

“I cannot give you those answers,” Nicolo eventually said, as if by saying it softly enough he could ease the tension between them, not break it. “All I can say is that I don’t feel rejected by my God. And, from what I have seen, I don’t think your God would reject you, either. If there is a purpose, a design for us, then we will just have to see what it is.”

He almost said _together_. It went unspoken.

Yusuf nodded, and his breathing slowed, but the torment of the uncertainty did not leave him. “If you have no answers, then I cannot stay.”

He rose to his feet, and Nicolo opened his mouth as if there was something he could say to change Yusuf’s mind. But Yusuf was right – he had been here to long already. Whatever tentative truce had lasted between them would not survive if someone found them, and while death for treason did not seem like such a terrible consequence anymore, the exile, and excommunication, were a harder thought to stomach. “Do you know your way?” Nicolo asked.

To Nicolo’s surprise, Yusuf let out a short burst of laughter. “Um,” he said. “Well. I may have got lost a few times of the way here – it turns out dream visits do not make a reliable map of the area. But, yes, I think I can find my way.” He smiled wryly up at Nicolo. “And do not worry – even if I get noticed, I will be fine. In the end. _Ila-liqaa’_ , Nicolo.”

He turned to leave.

“But I do want to apologise.”

Yusuf stopped in his tracks. Nicolo’s sudden outburst had surprised him almost as much as it had surprised Nicolo himself. “What?”

“You said earlier, that apologising would be a start,” Nicolo explained, trying so hard not to stumble over his words. “So, I do want to apologise. Because I am sorry. I truly am.”

Yusuf held his gaze for a moment, and then nodded. “I will accept your apology.”

Nicolo smiled. For the second time that night, a weight lifted from his shoulders. “Thank you. I will see you around, Yusuf.”

For one last time that night, Nicolo was treated to the sound of Yusuf laughing. “ _Inshallah_ , Nicolo. _Inshallah_.”

Then he left.

And the tent felt so quiet, so peaceful, nothing like the world outside. Nicolo knelt before the altar, hands clasped together and eyes closed, and felt God around him like he hadn’t for so long.

With Yusuf’s laughter echoing in his ears, he smiled.

  
***

  
He didn’t see Yusuf for a while after that. Not for a lack of conflict – the medics and clergy were short-staffed, and, somehow, a mild wish to see a specific Muslim soldier (even if it was only to kill and be killed by him) didn’t seem like a suitable excuse to avoid helping them.

There were skirmishes by the town’s walls almost every day, catapults hitting the camp every night. Nicolo spent most of his time divided between cutting new strips of cloth for bandages and issuing last rights. He didn’t even know if they counted anymore, now he had exchanged his robes for a sword. But he said the words to the dying men nonetheless, finding himself watching the eyes glass over with a morbid curiosity. Would these men actually see the gates to Heaven? What would that be like?

He started to dream of the Muslim – Yusuf – again. But these weren’t the visions he’d had before. Just memories.

  
***

  
They were running low on opium, again. Some of the medics had taken to quietly, quickly killing some of the men who came into their tent with wounds beyond what they could fix. Nicolo knew this, because they told him so, in confession.

He’d stopped sleeping in his tent. Instead he slept outside, towards the edge of the camp, looking up at the night sky. It gave him time to think to himself, about where he was going – a question he used to have such sure answers for.

It was also far enough away that he could barely hear the screams of the wounded anymore.

  
***

  
Days were hard to count anymore, and Nicolo certainly couldn’t tell you what month it was, but it had to be near a week before he was given instructions to rejoin the fight. All able men were being sent back to Tripoli. He saw a nearby medic – one of the few Englishmen here, Godfred – glance up at him, a brief look of concern. Nicolo wanted to tell the man that he didn’t have to worry about Nicolo being another lost cause lying on a stretcher. “I’ll return to help when I can,” he settled for. Godfred gave him a brief nod before turning back to his work.

  
***

  
Tripoli was the same as it had ever been. Big walls, closed doors, small rank of Muslim soldiers guarding the front. Bit more blood staining the dusty floor.

As he approached the gathered soldiers, someone shoved a helmet at him. He let it slip from his fingers. It wasn’t like he needed it anymore, and it felt important that he was easy to recognise.

As the armies lined up, Nicolo scanned the ranks of Muslims to try and spot Yusuf. When he didn’t see him, he realised he didn’t have plan past that. And when the armies charged, he felt himself falling behind.

If none of the strikes that he landed were killing blows, he pretended not to notice it. If he only attacked in defence of the men either side of him, he carefully didn’t notice that either. He kept his focus on the eyes of the men around him, looking, just _looking_ –

The whole thing was a massacre. It wasn’t long before Nicolo could see Christian pennants right by the gate to the city – there was no retreat for the Muslims, not now. All they could do was face the swords and pikes that surrounded them, and hope they died quick.

Not all of them did.

And finally, _finally_ , he saw him.

Yusuf. He saw Yusuf, on the edge of the fight, flanked by two Crusaders, fighting with a stubbornness that Nicolo knew wouldn’t leave him, not even in death.

The blade of a European longsword hacked into Yusuf’s leg like an axe in a tree, lodging there. Nicolo could almost feel the thud as Yusuf landed on his knees, a grimace of pain causing him to bare his teeth to the men before him.

Before he understood what he was doing, Nicolo was running forwards, shouldering through the sparse, ever-thinning battle. Yusuf raised his head, and by sheer chance met his gaze.

_Trust me_.

Yusuf nodded, the movement imperceptible to anyone but Nicolo.

Already partly distracted by other enemies around them, the two crusaders by Yusuf didn’t even blink when the sword that ran the kneeling man through wasn’t one of theirs. One Saracen defeated, they just turned their focus elsewhere.

Nicolo didn’t. He withdrew his sword from Yusuf’s chest, wiping the blood on the man’s surcoat until the Muslim symbolism on it was disfigured, unnoticeable. Yusuf was still wearing his helmet, the features that marked him as not European, for the most part, disguised.

Nicolo wasted no time lifting Yusuf up, resting him over his shoulder. By Heaven, the man was heavy. But the battle was getting quieter and quieter as more and more men died, and if they wanted peace, he had some distance to travel.

It was hard to maintain balance, what with an unfamiliar weight on his shoulder and the ground made uneven by bodies, blood, and discarded weapons. But somehow Nicolo managed to make good time. Not far from the outskirts of the city was a small grove of trees, maybe even something farmable, something the locals would tend to, harvest, when there wasn’t an invading army at their gates.

It was here, in the shade, that he lay Yusuf down. The man hadn’t stirred yet. Nicolo sat beside him, back against the wizened bark of a tree. He ran his hand through his hair, trying to clear any knots made by clotted blood.

It wasn’t long before he heard the familiar sound – a harsh gasp as a dead body desperately sucked in air. Yusuf was waking up, hands instinctively reaching to his chest and the wound that was no longer there.

“Sorry,” Nicolo said, gesturing at the blood that covered him… everywhere. “You took your time waking up.”

“‘Sorry’” Yusuf echoed sarcastically. Nicolo laughed. “I thought your people had left Tripoli,” Yusuf said bitterly.

“So did I. What did your lot do to bring us back?”

Yusuf sighed. “I was hoping you could tell me.” He pushed himself upright, tugging off his helmet and ruined surcoat. They were discarded carelessly as Yusuf moved to a more comfortable position, legs crossed. He seemed oblivious to the way Nicolo watched him as he looked out across towards the city. Or, perhaps more accurately, towards the massacre Nicolo had pulled him from.

“You are a hard man to understand, Nicolo,” Yusuf said, eventually. He was still watching the remnants of the battle, the figures picking through the dead. “I was surrounded, I was trapped, you could have – you _know_ I can communicate with you, you must know I have knowledge your leaders would want – you could have had me captured. Yet you bring me to safety.”

Nicolo blinked. “I hadn’t even considered that,” he admitted. “I just… didn’t want to be in that fight anymore. It’s not like they needed me.”

Yusuf was staring at him, now. Nicolo couldn’t hold the weight of his gaze, and decided to watch the city walls instead. Every now and then, a figure would appear, a silhouette against the warm light of the setting sun.

“Then why not just kill me?” Yusuf demanded. As he spoke, he gestured with his hands. There was something wonderfully honest about how Yusuf let every emotion flow through him. “You’ve done it before! It’s what you do to everyone else there! Just, just kill me, leave me with my brothers! Why bring me _here?_ ”

Wasn’t that the very question? “I suppose because I knew that, unlike them, you’d wake up,” Nicolo said, more of a suggestion of a theory than a concrete answer. “And perhaps you’d like to not wake up among corpses, for once. I know I would.”

“Why do you even _care_ what I’d like? Why don’t you _hate me_?”

The question, the _demand_ forced Nicolo to look at him. Yusuf had risen to his knees, a position which, in any other context, could be mistaken for begging. But here he was higher than Nicolo, looking down at him with fierce eyes and hands reaching out, asking for an answer. “Hate you?” Nicolo repeated, the words feeling strange on his tongue. Yusuf’s eyes were fixed on his, and Nicolo couldn’t look away. “Why would I hate you?”

“How can you _not?”_ Yusuf cried. “I am a Muslim!” He beat his chest at the word, pride and fury combining into a force that drew Nicolo in. “I have killed so many of your people. _So_ many! I have slit their throats, burned your tents, gutted them, left them to die! I have given my _life_ to stop you, to make you suffer. Many times! And now you sit there, you _Christian_ , you _hamagi_ , _fasid_ whore-son, you _saafil_ Frank! And you save me from the fight and sit here and so calmly ask _why you should hate me?”_

He was breathing hard. He probably didn’t expect the question Nicolo responded with, but it was a question Nicolo had to ask if he was going to give Yusuf the answer he deserved. “Does your religion have a form of confession?”

It was as if he’d pushed the man. Yusuf landed back on his legs, hands falling by his side. “What?”

“Confession. Um, admitting your sins to a man of the Church, to ask him to forgive you on God’s behalf.”

Yusuf looked at him like he was mad. “Why would I not just ask for forgiveness directly from God?”

Nicolo shrugged. “I think I’d prefer that, sometimes. I used to be a priest, and sometimes, some of the soldiers still come to me to confess. They sit there, and tell me of everything they’ve done, everyone they’ve killed, every home they’ve destroyed, every sin and every moral atrocity – and they sit there, waiting for me to cleanse their soul of guilt on God’s behalf so they can continue on with their day, and go right back to committing those _exact – same – sins_.” He stopped to breathe. His gaze had fallen on the looters again. “And you?” he continued, “You, I have seen pull men to safety. I’ve seen you praying, asking for answers. I’ve seen you defend your men, your home. I’ve seen you tending to the people you protect. You don’t ask me for a meaningless forgiveness for what you’ve done. Honestly? I think I prefer you to them.”

Once again, there was a weight in Yusuf’s gaze that Nicolo couldn’t handle. “You are still a mystery to me,” Yusuf said. “But I think I understand you a little better, now.”

Nicolo smiled. “That’s good. I really wasn’t sure if any of that would make any sense.”

Yusuf laughed. His whole body shook with it, and his eyes shone so bright, there was almost no difference between watching him and watching the sun. “You are a very honest man, Nicolo, aren’t you?”

Nicolo smiled wryly at him. “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

Yusuf shrugged, smiling, and seemed to dither before answering. “You know, it’s actually quite an attractive thing,” he admitted eventually, with more laughter.

He said it _so casually_ , that it took Nicolo a few long seconds to process what Yusuf had said. When he did, his breath caught in his throat – an ingrained reaction.

“Nicolo? Nicolo, is there something wrong?”

Yusuf was so close, watching him with so much concern.

Nicolo forced a smile. “I guess I am not so much a mystery to you after all. See, you already read my emotions better than half my friends.”

The attempt at humour was not dissuading Yusuf. “I am sorry, I said something wrong,” Yusuf muttered, running a hand through his hair and refusing to meet Nicolo’s eyes. “I meant no offence-”

“No,” Nicolo cut in. “No, you didn’t – don’t think that. You did nothing wrong. It’s just, ah-”

He felt more free here, with this man, than he had his whole life. Free of judgement, free of rules and restrictions – he was already admitting to things that would have him kicked out of any decent church, why not add one more to the list?

“I became a priest for many reasons,” Nicolo said. “It provided for a good life, in a town where that wasn’t always guaranteed. It allowed me to study the words of my God, to share them. It allowed me to help others. And, there was the added bonus, that it freed me from the responsibility of pretending I wanted a wife.”

He waited, to see if Yusuf understood what he was saying. He didn’t expect the grin he got. “Ah, so you _are_ like me, you _do_ prefer men!”

Most places, that would have been framed as an insult. Here? Nicolo shook his head and tried to stifle his own grin. “Not all factions of my religion believes such actions to be an unforgiveable sin,” Nicolo continued, as if Yusuf had not interrupted, “But most of them do. And that ‘most’ is growing.”

How quickly Yusuf’s expressions changed. One emotion would flit across his face to be replaced by another before you could blink. Only seconds before he had shone with amusement, yet here he was, making a noise only comparable to a growl. “Yet another reason for me to hate your cursed people,” he muttered, going off on some tangent that Nicolo could not make sense of. He left Yusuf to his rage.

The sun had nearly vanished below the horizon, the sky turning violet.

“How about you?”

The question took a minute to register. For the first time in a while, Nicolo’s thoughts had been completely blank. He blinked at Yusuf. “ _Scusi?_ ”

“You said not all of your people believed it to be a sin,” Yusuf said. “What about you? What do you think?”

Nicolo looked back to where the stars were starting to appear over the silhouette of Tripoli. Outside the gates, the looters had vanished. Some of the bodies had been collected by brothers, friends. Others were left there to rot.

He had spent a long time, reading a lot of books, trying to find out that answer when he was still in Genova. “The men who condemn such love as sin,” Nicolo said slowly, “are the same men who praise such violence as God’s message. I don’t think I trust their judgement anymore.”

There were a few more moments of silence.

“Good,” Yusuf said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I am glad.”

The world was silent, motionless. Idly, Nicolo found the North Star in the heavens. “We can’t stay here forever,” he said.

“As tempting as the thought is,” Yusuf sighed, his eyes closed and head resting against the tree they shared. He looked as if he could fall asleep right there. “No. I guess you’re right. There are things to do.”

Nicolo moved first. He got to his feet, ignoring the tiredness that wanted to pull him down, the comfort of knowing, for once, he could have slept safely with the man beside him. He offered a hand to Yusuf, who took it without hesitation. “Where are you going?” Yusuf asked as Nicolo pulled him to his feet.

It was a good question. He looked at the camp by Tripoli, faintly lit by campfires. He could go there. He probably should. The soldiers would be there, celebrating their victory.

But then he had made a promise, hadn’t he? To the medic, Godfred. “Arqa,” he said. “I want to go back to Arqa.”

Yusuf smiled at him. “What a coincidence,” he said. “You’re heading my way.”

  
***

  
It would be a long walk. A day on horse could translate to many more by foot, and a lot of exhaustion to go with it.

All in all, this probably wasn’t the best decision either of them had ever made. But walking under the moon was always pleasant. With good company, all the better.

Somehow, Yusuf had managed to materialise a small bag of flatbread from somewhere, and was offering some to Nicolo.

“Where on _earth_ did you get that from?”

Bemused, Yusuf gestured to his belt. Only now did Nicolo see there were several small bags tied to the leather, one clearly a waterskin. “You have to be prepared,” Yusuf said. “You never know when a mysterious, handsome stranger is going to come and steal you away.”

He might have said this with a straight face, but that hardly fooled Nicolo anymore. “Do you ever stop?”

Yusuf shrugged. “Sometimes. Not very often.” He grinned, and offered the bread once again. This time Nicolo accepted it.

They had agreed to leave the path quite early on. It got too much traffic from soldiers, and they weren’t overly keen to meet Christians or Muslims. This might mean that the walk was harder, but the view was… incomparable.

Nicolo hadn’t even realised they were in sight of the sea until the sun started to rise. The instant the first few rays began to dance of water, he grabbed Yusuf’s shoulder, holding him still. He didn’t need to explain.

“ _Allahu Ahkbar.”_

Nicolo might not understand the words, but he thought he got the gist.

“Even with the dust, the heat, the food, the lack of weather,” Nicolo said, “When I see the sun over the water, I feel like maybe I’m not so far from home after all.”

He was so distracted by the beauty of the sunrise, it took him a while before he realised that Yusuf was looking at him instead, an expression on his face that Nicolo had never seen before. “What is it?” he asked, cautiously.

Yusuf shook his head, as if to clear it from thoughts. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just – I was thinking something like that, too.”

This time, it was Nicolo watching him.

“Do you mind if we stop for prayer?” Yusuf asked. When he turned to face Nicolo, his face was silhouetted with the golden rays. “I’ve already missed _Isha’a_ last night, I should not forget the morning prayer too.”

“Of course.” Nicolo looked back out across the sea. “I might even join you.”

“You wish to pray to your god?”

And he did, he realised. Not just the platitudes, the recited prayers. “Yeah,” Nicolo said, with a new conviction. “Yeah. It’s been a while since we spoke properly. He’s probably worried about me.”

Yusuf laughed, and Nicolo smiled. When Yusuf knelt to the floor, at a careful angle, forehead touching the ground, Nicolo knelt beside him.

  
***

  
They stopped to rest at midday. Yusuf went to pray again as Nicolo collapsed in the small bit of shade the short trees provided. He missed big trees. Big trees, lots of leaves, lots of shade.

Dozing in-and-out of consciousness, it felt like no time at all before his rest was being disturbed by a big, hulking figure trying to push him out from the shade. “No. No, no no-”

“Fine priest you are, not sharing with a tired, helpless-”

“You cannot call yourself helpless, I know full well all the ways you could kill me if you tried-”

“I do not want to kill you, I want to rest in the _shade-_ ”

Compromises were made. Nicolo didn’t think he’d slept this close to another person since he’d been made to share a bed with his sister as a child.

In his dreams, he saw Yusuf. But he saw them again, too. The riders in the green land. This time, he could see details. The women, the axe one carried, the bow on the other. The clothing from far to the East.

When he woke, Yusuf woke with him, one hand lightly resting on Nicolo’s shoulder. “You see them to?”

Nicolo nodded.

“Do you think-”

“They are like us?” Nicolo thought for a moment. “Perhaps. Maybe. They could be. These dreams are like the ones I used to have of you.”

“And I of you.”

The conversation ended there, but Nicolo was sure Yusuf was having the same thoughts he was.

  
***

  
They saw them first as the sun started to dip from the sky. Not soldiers – too small, too slow. Too far from the road.

They were locals. Two carts between them, donkeys, not horses. Bags of supplies and dusty clothing. They were ahead of them and, if Nicolo’s sight wasn’t failing him, they seemed to be moving the same way they were. Towards Arqa.

Nicolo pointed them out, Yusuf having to strain his eyes to see them. “What do you think?”

He didn’t expect the suspicious, concerned look Yusuf shot him, but perhaps he should have. He certainly understood it. “What _about_ them?” Yusuf asked, the words sharp.

“They’re probably relocating,” Nicolo explained. “Or trading. Either way, they could probably do with protection. It would slow us down, but they might be able to offer food, water.”

For a moment, Yusuf stared at him. Then he laughed. “I don’t know why I keep thinking of you as a Christian, when you are, instead, a type of man I have never met before.”

Nicolo knew it was meant as a compliment, but he couldn’t take it as such. He frowned. “I am still very much a Christian.”

Yusuf waved a hand. “Ah, Frank, then.”

“I am technically Genovese, not French.”

Yusuf laughed again. “Oh, that explains it then.”

“You joke, but it really does.”

The closer they got, the more Nicolo realised how right he’d been about the travellers slowing them down. It was only a small group, no more than ten, but there was an old woman with them and several children. Only one of the group was a grown, able-bodied adult, and it soon became clear that one of his eyes was no longer functioning. Not with a scar like that.

Nicolo shared a look with Yusuf. These travellers should not be this close to the war.

Fully aware of how his pale skin shone like an off-putting beacon in the midday sun, he stayed back as Yusuf approached. He spoke to the man first. As they had approached he had stood forwards, ready to defend his people – family? – with a weapon in his hand or without. But as Yusuf spoke, the man visibly relaxed. Eventually he was nodding, smiling. A child clinging nervously to his leg was pushed forwards, introduced. With a wide smile Yusuf crouched down, and joked with her. A little girl, laughing at whatever foolish thing Yusuf was saying now.

The joy in Yusuf’s face as he beckoned Nicolo forwards was contagious. “We can stay?” Nicolo asked, though the answer was obvious.

“Sadhan said they’re heading to the ports up the coast,” Yusuf explained. Without warning, he stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes. Nicolo was baffled until Yusuf laughed and gestured over his shoulder. Behind him, Nicolo saw the young girl pulling all manner of silly faces. Accepting the thrown gauntlet, Nicolo pulled a face that his sister had always told him made him look like a fish. It made this girl laugh, too.

“But, yes,” Yusuf said, interrupting Nicolo’s temporary job as a clown. “They said they would welcome our company to Arqa.”

“Do they have food and water to spare?”

“Of course,” Yusuf said, pride in his voice. “We are their guests, and they are Muslim. Although,” he continued, with a voice of affected sadness, “They don’t speak Sabir, let alone your other _ahbal_ language. I’ll have to translate for you, I’m afraid. Will that be a problem?”

Nicolo let the insult to his language pass. For now. “As long as you promise only to say nice things about me.”

Yusuf laughed, without shame. “I promise no such thing.”

  
***

  
The children seemed fascinated by Nicolo, and he couldn’t tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing. He wasn’t even that _good_ with kids. He had a nephew, but he’d only seen the boy at church where the kid wasn’t allowed to misbehave. Which was… _very_ different than these children. They seemed to want to climb on him.

Yusuf was amazing with them. He’d fling them round in a way Nicolo was sure should cause injury, but the children would just laugh and ask him to do it again.

He learned a lot about Yusuf in the few days they travelled with the caravan.

For instance, the man could sing. Not the kind of singing Nicolo had been surrounded with lately, soldiers’ voices inspired with fervour and passion and no actual knowledge of how to hold a note. No, a soft voice, singing walking songs during the day and lullabies in the evening. Nicolo had just watched him and listened, as they sat around the campfire, the young children being sung to sleep. In the peaceful silence that followed, it was all he could do to keep from saying, “Don’t stop.”

He was learning that the man was a bit of a bastard, too. Not that this was new, really, but Nicolo didn’t think he’d met someone who could be so rude and so friendly at the same. They’d stop for lunch and Nicolo didn’t need to pick out his name amidst the conversation to know they were talking about him. The long glances and gestures his way and Yusuf’s shit-eating grin was enough to tell him that.

“Will you tell me what you were saying about me?” Nicolo had asked as they packed up to get moving once more, fully aware of the promise Yusuf had refused to make when they had joined the small caravan.

“I will,” Yusuf had replied. “One day.” And there it was, that shit-eating grin, once again.

“You’re an arsehole.”

“I know.”

And for all that, he was kind, too. Nicolo couldn’t accept all the food that was offered to him, not while knowing that these travellers needed it more than he did, and he knew he’d accidentally offended them with his refusals. But Yusuf was smarter than him. For each piece of food passed his way, he’d pass another onto the children. The children weren’t going to turn down the dried figs he smuggled them. They didn’t have the pride that adults did.

Nicolo caught him sneaking the fruits to the giggling children behind him, once. Yusuf had just met his gaze and winked.

Nicolo had started copying him after that. He almost immediately regretted it when the young girl took the offer as an invitation to steal a pastry from him.

He’d liked those pastries.

But Nicolo was learning about himself, too. He’d forgotten how good that felt.

One of the children, a young boy called Halil, had tugged at Yusuf’s sleeve and pointed Nicolo’s way. Nicolo had raised an eyebrow as the child whispered. As if he would understand the conversation anyway.

This time, he was allowed to know what was said. “He asked why you don’t pray,” Yusuf explained, as the child ran away to share his new knowledge with his friends.

Nicolo frowned. He’d spent more time talking to God in the last few days than the last few weeks combined. “I pray.”

But Yusuf shook his head. “He meant the Salah times, the five daily prayers.”

The routine the Muslims followed. That was fair enough. Normally when the travellers and Yusuf took part in their rituals, Nicolo sat off to the side, not wanting to intrude. “What did you tell the boy?” he asked, not expecting a truthful answer.

He wasn’t disappointed. “I told him you were a filthy heathen who had no knowledge of _Allah_. And that you would probably try and eat him in his sleep as a sacrifice to your demon masters.”

Nicolo stared daggers at him, but Yusuf just smiled back angelically.

With a laugh, Yusuf eventually gave in. “I told him you simply have a different connection to _Allah_ than we do. Better? That you still spoke to him, merely at other times and in other ways.”

Nicolo nodded. “So… he doesn’t think I will try to eat him at night?”

“No. He does not.”

“Shame. I could have worked with that.”

  
***

  
They saw no one else for two days. The third day, Nicolo knew that Arqa would come into sight soon.

He hadn’t put much thought into how he’d return. He wasn’t naïve enough to think no one would notice his absence, or question his return. But at least he could just walk into the camp.

“How are you going to get back into the city?” he asked Yusuf, after the morning prayers were completed.

Yusuf shrugged. “I’ve got rather skilled at getting back in after the fighting is over,” he said. “There are pathways, small entrances, if you know where to look. In the chaos, it’s easy to pretend I got mixed up in crowds.”

“There’s no chaos this time.” Nicolo hesitated. “Or maybe there is. They could be fighting right now, and we know nothing about it.”

“They are almost _certainly_ fighting right now,” Yusuf corrected, knocking lightly against Nicolo’s shoulder. Then he grinned. “I bet my people are winning.”

A retort was waiting on the tip of Nicolo’s tongue, but he was interrupted by young Marula running back to the group from where she’d rushed ahead. She was panicked, rambling, grasping at her father’s hand as soon as she was near enough.

Nicolo looked to Yusuf for some indication as to what was going on.

Yusuf’s face had tightened into a grimace. His hand was resting on his sword’s hilt, and he strode forwards. “Men on horses,” he called over his shoulder to Nicolo.

As Yusuf went to speak to the travellers, to ask what else little Marula had seen, Nicolo jogged past them.

He hadn’t realised how far from the coast they had strayed, not until he saw how far from sight it was now. They’d moved closer to the road than he would have liked. And now they were facing the consequence because, true enough, in the distance was the shape of riders, heading down from the north. By now, they would have seen the travellers. It was too much to hope that they would leave them in peace.

Sure enough, as time passed, the silhouettes only got bigger, and clearer – closer.

There was the sound of movement behind him as the travellers took up whatever advice Yusuf had given them. The man himself appeared at Nicolo’s side, following his gaze towards where the riders approached.

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” Nicolo said tightly. It was the worst of the two options, and he knew it. “You need to cover your armour. I want to try and talk to them first.”

“Are you sure-”

“Not at all.” Nicolo looked at him. He placed a hand lightly on Yusuf’s sword arm, holding his hand in place against his sword hilt. “But, let me try.”

For a moment he was sure Yusuf was going to argue with him over the issue. A surprise attack would give them the better chance, after all.

Instead, Yusuf just nodded, and left Nicolo standing there. The first line of defence.

As the men approached, he got a better sense of them. Five men – not ideal, but not unmanageable. French insignia. Two had crossbows clipped to their saddles, full quivers of bolts beside them.

When they were in range, Nicolo called out to them. “ _Mes amis!_ It is good to see you!”

That brought them up short. They hadn’t expected a friendly voice, let alone one that spoke their language.

Only three of them dismounted. One of them brought his crossbow. The other two kept their hands on their swords.

Nicolo’s instincts told him to do the same, and wasn’t that a tragedy in itself?

“You are Italian?” one of the soldiers asked. His surcoat was clean and embroidered – probably a son of nobility. Definitely the commander of the group.

“Ah, my accent comes through, then?” Nicolo asked with a grin. “Yes. I’m a Priest. I was with the troops under Raymond of Toulouse, sent to Tripoli. There was a battle, I…” his language failed him. He hadn’t spoken anything but Sabir with Yusuf for several days now. He gestured to his head, hoping the men would understand he meant an injury. “These kind Samaritans offered to help me back to Arqa.”

For all that Nicolo tried to position himself between the Franks and the travellers, there was only so much space one man could take up. Two of the soldiers circled around him to get a better look at the carts, the bundles on them.

Nicolo saw behind him for the first time. The few adults were standing together. The children, the old woman, were nowhere to be seen. They were, Nicolo presumed, hiding under the blankets, amidst the packages of food and wares on the very carts the Crusaders were now investigating. Yusuf he almost didn’t recognise. With a light shawl hiding all of his chainmail armour, he could simply be another local farmer, his darker skin and tightly-curled hair indistinguishable from that of the scarred man beside him.

Except for the hardness in his gaze, tracing the footsteps of the enemy soldiers with a warrior’s awareness.

“They are not worth your time,” Nicolo implored the Franks, spreading his hands, urging them to remain calm and peaceful. “No one here is a threat, trust me.”

To his relief, the soldiers left the carts alone. They returned to their commander, and began to talk in French, too quiet and too fast for Nicolo to keep up with.

He understood a few words, here and there. _Manger… pour l’aide… ne peut pas arr_ _êter…_

As much as he didn’t like it, he waited until they were finished conferring.

“You would have been disappointed,” the nobleman said eventually, scanning the carts once more. “The siege has moved on from Arqa. We will take you to the new camp. Help us collect their supplies – you can ride behind Estienne.”

He said it so casually, Nicolo almost missed it. The nobleman had almost passed him before he realised. “You cannot!” he said, reaching out a desperate hand to stop the man from moving any closer. “They have so little as is!”

The nobleman looked down at Nicolo’s hand as if its touch was burning him. “It will serve the armies of God better than it will serve these people,” he said. His voice was unwavering. He did not hesitate as he gestured to his men, barking out his orders.

Nicolo noticed the final two men jump down from their horses. One of them grabbed his crossbow, aiming it at the travellers, and Yusuf.

“Please,” he begged, counting the footsteps as the nobleman approached where little Marula, Halil, and the others were hiding. _Five, six, seven…_ “Please, don’t do this…” _nine, ten…_

The nobleman stopped, but it was just a final pause, one last disdainful glance at Nicolo. He raised a hand, and Nicolo felt the crossbow bolt pierce his chest.

At this range, the force of it was devastating, even with chainmail. He looked down, and could see the tip of metal protruding forwards, just to the right of his sternum. “Oh,” he said, weakly. He collapsed to the floor. Somehow, the thud against his knees hurt more than the shard of iron and wood that had pierced him so thoroughly.

He was torn from his shock by a sound he’d heard a hundred times before. He knew what he’d see before he looked.

Yusuf had dropped the shawl, had drawn his sword before the Franks had time to react. It was his war-cry that had stirred Nicolo, an outburst of pure rage he had heard countless times as the Muslim cut him down on the battlefield.

The man who had shot Nicolo was dead before he knew it.

“Come on then, you _alhayawanat alqadhra, kuss ummak-_ ” Yusuf had started in Sabir, but fell back into Arabic as his rage overtook him. His words might have been unknown to the Franks, but the vitriol behind them was clear in any language. He had their full attention.

As Nicolo watched him, he realised this served two purposes. For starters, as Yusuf circled them, he stepped further from the travellers – and forced the Franks to look at him, and not them. More than that, as they approached Yusuf the last few soldiers who had been by the horses had to pass Nicolo. The bolt had pierced straight through his right lung – not a killing shot, not immediately, but normally enough to put a man out of action for good. Enough for them to dismiss him as no threat.

Nicolo took a breath, grabbed the few inches of the bolt he could see sticking from his chest, and _pulled_.

None of the Franks heard anything over Yusuf’s insults. Not Nicolo’s grunts, not the tearing of skin. Not the sound as he got to his feet and drew his sword from his scabbard.

“You filthy Saracen pig,” the noble was saying, raising his sword to attack Yusuf.

Nicolo met Yusuf’s gaze. “Not technically a Saracen,” he said.

They attacked at the same time.

With surprise at his side, Nicolo took the head off the first Frank with no resistance. The other recovered his wits in time to block Nicolo’s swing, but combat like this was different to fighting in a melee. Here, the training young Nicolo had had to endure actually came in useful. He parried easily, giving the man his full focus as he blocked, feinted, and elegantly swung his sword straight into the man’s side. He grabbed the crossbow from the man’s off-hand before he hit the floor.

The last two Franks were fighting Yusuf. He hadn’t had the advantage Nicolo had, but as he watched Nicolo saw Yusuf’s scimitar slice cleanly through the nobleman’s chainmail, his fancy surcoat, and separate his ribs from his guts. Nicolo winced – he remembered distinctly what that felt like.

The final Crusader was better trained. He didn’t wait for Yusuf to be finished dispatching his leader – he just calmly stabbed Yusuf through the neck.

A death like that, there’s no time for a last breath. The sword had cut cleanly through Yusuf’s spine, and his body collapsed to the floor like nothing more than a child’s toy.

Nicolo couldn’t breathe. He waited, until this man had turned his attention back to him, until this so-called Christian was almost within arm’s reach.

Then Nicolo raised the crossbow he was holding and fired the bolt straight through the man’s left eye.

He heard the skull shatter, watched as the bolt went flying out the other side. When the soldier’s corpse slumped to the floor, blood, brain and bone flying from the distorted helmet, Nicolo kicked him to the side.

_Yusuf_.

He hadn’t woken yet. He was still in the contorted position he had fallen in.

Casting his sword and crossbow to the side, Nicolo skidded to the ground beside him, hand reaching desperately to Yusuf’s neck to – to what? Hold it together? Wait for it to heal?

He could see his _spine_. The shattered shards of bone came away at Nicolo’s hesitant touch.

“Come on,” Nicolo said, shaking Yusuf’s shoulders with increasing desperation. “Come on, Yusuf, come back now, come back, please, _ti prego, mio Dio, ti prego-_ ”

Under his hands, muscle, skin, and bone slowly started to reform.

Nicolo rested his head on Yusuf’s chest as if in prayer.

“ _Grazie, grazie, grazie-”_

When Yusuf finally gasped back to life, voice rattling as his throat finished healing, Nicolo was kneeling over him, waiting. “You’re alive, it’s alright, they’re dead,” Nicolo muttered, saying calming platitudes as Yusuf’s eyes darted around them, one hand grabbing frantically for a sword, the other clenched vice-like on Nicolo’s arm.

As he saw the threat was over, saw the children in the carts, he started to calm down. His breathing levelled, his eyes closed for a moment, and Nicolo watched as peace returned to him.

When he opened is his eyes, it was to look directly at Nicolo. With a soft smile, he reached up a hand, wiping at the tears Nicolo didn’t even know he had shed. “Oh, Nicolo, _ma atyabak_ – you knew I would not stay down. You have tested this yourself. Often.”

He had. “I might have known that here,” Nicolo said, tapping his head. “But it seems like my heart had some difficulty believing it.”

For a moment, Yusuf’s hand lingered against his cheek. “I don’t think I’ve seen you show this much emotion before,” Yusuf teased. He pinched Nicolo’s cheek as a grandmother might.

Moment over, Nicolo slapped the hand away. “Alright, _stronzo_ ,” he muttered, leaning back, giving Yusuf space to sit up. But the man seemed to content to lie there and laugh at him. “Hey, stop it. There’s still work to do.”

That sobered Yusuf up quickly. Nicolo watched as, for the first time, he properly took in the bodies of the dead crusaders that surrounded them – and the stricken faces of the family they had protected. “How much did they see?” he asked in a low voice.

“Too much,” Nicolo admitted. “That’s going to be a problem, isn’t it?”

  
***

  
Like when they had first met, Nicolo stayed back while Yusuf tried to talk to the travellers. Trying to keep himself busy, distracted, he fell back on the practicalities. Tearing a strip of cloth from the surcoat of a dead man, he began to clean his sword. He tried to. Blood dried quickly in this heat.

Marula had her eyes fixed on him, but it wasn’t like before. There was no longer a joyful curiousity in her gaze.

Most children who came into a church were a little frightened of the priests, in their big robes. The fear he could see in her was much worse.

When Yusuf returned to him, he was still scrubbing his sword, even though it was already clean. “They don’t want us to travel with them anymore, do they?”

Yusuf shook his head.

Nicolo sighed, and forced his shaking hand to let go of the blood-stained cloth. “I cannot blame them for it.”

“They are grateful,” Yusuf said, lowering himself to sit beside him. “They are, they thank us, but…”

“I know,” Nicolo cut in, so Yusuf didn’t have to say it. “I know.”

He let the sword fall to the floor. So worried about maintaining his weapons, he hadn’t realised the blood soaking into the skin on his hands. “I can’t go back to the Crusades,” he whispered, turning his hands over as if, by checking again, he could make the Christian’s blood vanish. “Not after this.”

“I am sorry, that you had to do this.”

But Nicolo shook his head, meeting Yusuf’s concerned gaze with a fierce determination. “But I’m not. I’m not sorry I did what I did. I know that my actions, right now, more than anything else I have done since I left Genova, were the right thing to do. Killing those men! Those Christians! _That_ was right. I do not want to rejoin the Crusaders, wherever they are.” He looked down at his surcoat, the insignia of the church barely visible through the mud, and dust, and dirt. “ _Perdonami, mio Dio_ , but I do not believe in their war anymore.”

For a moment, the only sounds were of their companions, preparing to move on without them.

“I would lie,” Yusuf said slowly, softly, “If I said I had not hoped you would say that. So you will not mind, then, that I asked Shadhan if he could spare us a change of clothes.”

Nicolo turned his head towards Yusuf so fast his neck clicked.

Yusuf shrugged. “You showed me, a long time ago, that there are better ways to help people than to just kill those who disagree with us. I would like to try some of those other ways, if you would allow me to learn from you.”

Nicolo couldn’t speak. The very idea that this man thought there was anything he could learn from Nicolo, that there was a single, solitary act of kindness that Nicolo could teach _him_ –

Their silence was interrupted by Shadhan placing two bags before them. He exchanged no more words.  
  


***

  
Yusuf waited until the wagons had started to move off before getting to his feet. “We could try to find your people, if there’s anything you need before we go?”

Nicolo thought for a moment about those fucking candlesticks and the money they’d could have got for them. “No,” he said eventually. “Anything I’ve left wouldn’t be worth the effort it takes to fetch it.” There was a copy of the Bible he’d left in his pack back in his tent, and a few tunics. But it was the words in the Bible that mattered, not the book itself, and the tunics didn’t matter if they’d been given new clothes anyway. “How about you? Anything in Arqa you need?”

“Nothing I can’t buy elsewhere,” Yusuf said, lightly tossing one of Sadhan’s packs his way. “I wasn’t entirely joking earlier when I said you never know when you’ll have to change your plans. I have a habit of keeping items of worth on me.”

The filled packs the travellers had left them were bigger than the satchel Nicolo had abandoned, and much more plentifully filled. Small wrapped bundles of food, a filled waterskin, and there was a blanket, too. “This is… ridiculous,” Nicolo muttered, as he pulled out the clothes they’d been promised – a full tunic in light green, brown loose trousers. Two white scarfs, one for a belt, one, presumably, to cover his head. The boots were the only thing missing, but his own would work well enough. “I feel bad for taking this.”

“You didn’t take it, they gave it,” Yusuf corrected. “They’re good people, they wanted to help us. Us travelling with them just… wasn’t an option anymore.”

With further protestations on the tip of his tongue, Nicolo raised his head to argue against him – and was shocked dumb.

Yusuf turned to look at him, his bare torso shining slightly with sweat from the weight of the chainmail. “What?” he asked, shaking out his own new tunic.

“Nothing.” Nicolo busied himself with laying out his own new change of clothes. “I just. Didn’t realise we were changing… _right_ now.”

Yusuf laughed, very definitely at Nicolo. “I was just eager to wear clothes that weren’t stained with sweat or blood. But perhaps I should have warned you - it’s a lot to take in, yes?”

“Just put your damned clothes on.”

Yusuf just laughed even harder. Nicolo’s face flushed, but he was smiling.

He only turned back to face Yusuf once he’d finished dressing. But not, it seemed, to Yusuf’s satisfaction. Tutting, he crouched to tuck Nicolo’s trousers into the top of his boots, and pulled the scarf from his head completely. “You look like a clown.”

“Well it’s not like I have much practise with these-”

Yusuf just shushed him, and, hands cupping Nicolo’s jaw, turned his head to the direction he wanted it. Breathless, Nicolo watched Yusuf’s eyes as the man stood before him, handled him, wrapping the scarf firmly in place.

Finally, Yusuf stepped back, only to grimace. “It’ll have to do,” he sighed. He picked up his pack and began to walk. “You still look like a clown, though.”

Baffled, Nicolo grabbed his own pack hurriedly and glanced around, as if the environment could provide some answer as to where Yusuf was so confidently headed. “Where – where are you going? Where are _we_ going?”

Yusuf turned around to answer, but didn’t stop walking. “We’re too obvious, around here,” he said, gesturing north towards Arqa and south towards Tripoli. “But _that_ way is Tartus,” Yusu continued, pointing north-west towards the coast, “And we can probably get passage on a merchant ship from there to… most anywhere, really. And _then_ I will let you have input.”

There wasn’t much Nicolo could say to that, really. “How many days walk?”

Yusuf shrugged. “Maybe one, maybe two. Maybe three if you keep standing there looking like an _al’abalah_.”

He turned forwards, and kept walking.

Grimacing, Nicolo threw his pack over his shoulder, and hurried forwards. “Yeah, keep insulting me, you _scoreggia d’asino-_ ”

  
***

  
A day and a half, in the end. They made good progress, both of them well accustomed to long journeys by foot. The night had been interesting – for all the insults and jibes Yusuf threw his way, they ate their evening meal in a peaceful companionship, Yusuf trading figs for his less-preferred pastries quite happily.

They hadn’t managed to find decent shelter, and the temperature dropped rapidly after the sun set. They ended up lying on one blanket, and pressing up close for warmth under the other.

When Tartus came into sight the next day, Nicolo smiled as something occurred to him. “You’ll have to rely on me this time,” he said, not trying to hide the glee in his tone. “Tartus is held by us.”

When Yusuf just chuckled, Nicolo stopped walking, glaring him suspiciously. “What?”

“Your information is a bit behind,” Yusuf called back over his shoulder with a grin. “We took it back a week or so ago.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Nope.”

It wasn’t until they were close enough to see the banners that Nicolo finally had to admit the truth of what Yusuf said. He remained stubbornly silent as Yusuf laughed at him.

  
***

  
He had walked through Muslim-held towns before. There had been a way the locals looked at you, when you wore full European armour, the surcoat marking you out for all to see, with a fully-armed regiment of your brothers at your side.

Nicolo didn’t get half as many looks, walking by Yusuf’s side in his borrowed clothes. Perhaps a second glance as people registered how pale he was, his colouring, his sword, but little else. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel like an outsider – everyone was so loud, so vocal, and he didn’t understand a word of it.

No, not true. Every now and then he thought he caught someone yelling one of the names Yusuf would call him.

The smell, however –

“Ah, take a breath, Yusuf,” Nicolo said, closing his eyes and smiling. “Rotting fish, and seaweed. I’d almost forgotten how good it smells to be by the ocean.”

Yusuf shot him a sideways glance. “You horrify me.”

As Nicolo enjoyed the atmosphere, Yusuf was digging through one of the small bags tied to his waist – the only part of his previous outfit he’d kept. Both their chainmail was dumped beside the bodies of the Christians they’d left by the road to Arqa. Swords would come in useful, but for them the armour just seemed… inconsequential. Eventually Yusuf pulled out a small woven cloth purse, and passed it to Nicolo. “That is all I have,” he said, and Nicolo felt a surprising weight of coins. “Get food, and food only. Spent it all and I will kill you.”

Nicolo met his gaze. It was no idle threat.

“I am going to see if I can get us lodging, and see what ships are in harbour right now. I’ll meet you by the sea front this evening.”

Nicolo nodded.

For a few moments they stood there, in an awkward sort of silence. This had never happened before, Nicolo realised. They’d never really parted amicably. The nearest they’d got was Yusuf having to rush out of the chapel before he was discovered. They weren’t used to having to say goodbye, let alone with a reason to need to find each other later.

Well, perhaps that last part wasn’t true.

“Um… I’ll see you later, then,” Nicolo said, after a beat. Part of his instincts told him to shake Yusuf’s hand. Hug him, maybe?

Yusuf, amusingly, seemed to be having the same issue. Eventually, he grabbed Nicolo’s upper arm, patted it, and turned and walked away with some speed.

A laugh burst from Nicolo’s lips, and he found he couldn’t stop grinning. Well, whatever else it was, time with that man was never boring.

  
***

  
The language barrier presented some difficulty, but bartering is bartering, no matter the city you come from, and Nicolo had some knowledge of how much was a reasonable amount to pay for some dried fish.

It was almost comforting, to find that fish markets were fish markets, the world around. Knowing that he could turn a corner and be hit by the same familiar scent of gutted squid, turn another to find someone handing out street food. The only difference, really, was the lack of alcohol on sale.

And the language. The language really was different.

By the time the sun had started to fall from the sky, Nicolo was where he had been told to be, sitting at the dockside with food and a still mostly full purse.

There weren’t many ships in the harbour. Which, in retrospect, made perfect sense. No merchant would trade with a town that could change allegiance at a moment’s notice.

As he dangled his feet above the water’s edge, watching the few small shoals of fish darting around below him, he took another bite of the food in his hand. From what he’d been able to gather from the vendor, it was… something, that was… fishy and edible.

It wasn’t long before he saw Yusuf approach. Out of his armour, the man seemed far more relaxed, and Nicolo didn’t think it was just the weight. There was an emotion is his eyes, as he looked out to the sea, that Nicolo was sure matched his own.

“ _Masaa’ al-khayr,”_ Yusuf said when in reach.

“ _Buonasera_.”

He waited until Yusuf had sat beside him, legs hanging off the edge of the promenade, before handing over the food he’d bought him.

Yusuf didn’t take it. He looked at it with distrustful eyes. “Do you like this?” he asked, suspicion evident in his tone.

Nicolo looked down at his half-finished dinner. “I’ll be honest,” he said, mouth full, “I have absolutely no idea what I’m eating. But yes, it’s not bad.”

Yusuf continued to look suspicious. Nicolo just wiggled the food at him until Yusuf started laughing. “Fine. Fine! Give it here,” he said, snatching it from Nicolo’s hand.

For a moment, they sat and ate, watching the sun slowly lower beneath the waves.

“Luckily, it seems my afternoon was more successful than yours,” Yusuf said eventually. “There is a ship leaving with the tide tomorrow morning, heading to Alexandria, and he will happily give us passage.” He took another bite, and swallowed. Nicolo thought of what he knew of Alexandria – a huge city, old port in Egypt. The library that had burned a thousand years ago. “In lieu of payment, given we are currently poor, I offered our services as deckhands. You are good on a ship, yes?”

Nicolo stared at him. “No!” he said, quite emphatically. “What on earth gave you that idea?”

Yusuf stared right back, wide-eyed and baffled. “But – you said you grew up in a port! How do you not know ships?”

“I was the son of a scribe! Of a seamstress! Why would I have needed to go on a blessed boat for?”

Yusuf pinched the bridge of his nose. “ _’Aetaa Allah li alsabr_ ,” he muttered. “Alright. It’s alright. I just hope you learn quickly. You can, at least, I hope, manage basic carpentry?”

The most Nicolo had ever done with a saw and a hammer was fix a chicken coop for an elderly parishioner once. Something told him it wouldn’t be prudent to give Yusuf those specifics right now. “I have some experience.”

“Good. Because I also have lodging for us. Some _jida_ offered us space in her attic if we fixed some stuff in her fishery.”

Nicolo popped the last of his dinner in his mouth, and rubbed his hands clean on his tunic. “I think we can manage that.”

  
***

  
Yusuf had failed to mention the attic space was _above_ the fishery.

“Do you remember,” Nicolo moaned, taking off his tunic, “what it felt like to put on these clothes for the first time? Clean, fresh, stain-free?” he threw it beside the pail of water with disgust. “Now it’s just… _fish guts_.”

Yusuf was laughing at him again. “I thought you said you liked the smell of rotting fish!”

“It was _nostalgic_ ,” Nicolo corrected. “I did not mean I wanted to _bathe_ in the stuff.”

Their landlady was a lovely old woman by the name of Rusa. The sweetest thing, she had offered them food and drink and held Yusuf in conversation for a very, very long time before showing them through to the fishery. The table was wobbling, apparently, and the door didn’t stay shut anymore, and she was worried about a crack in the tiles, and a hook had fallen from the beam, and –

It would have been alright, if the space had been cleaned. It hadn’t. There were fish parts everywhere.

“This is your fault,” Nicolo had said, seeing the horrors that awaited them.

“I know,” Yusuf had groaned back, rolling his sleeves up and heading for the table first. “I know.”

Now, it was late, and everything was fixed to a passable standard. There was no bedding in the small attic space, but Rusa had given them buckets and told them where to get water, and left candles for them to see by.

“My callouses have gone,” Yusuf complained, as Nicolo lay their blanket out on the wooden floorboards. “I used to have callouses on my hands, but they’ve healed, like all other wounds. No wonder my hands were hurting so much.”

“At least it doesn’t last long anymore.” Nicolo had, at one point, hit the tips of his fingers quite squarely with a wooden mallet. The pain had gone before he’d finished swearing. “Are you done with that water?”

Yusuf narrowed his eyes at him, yanking the bucket closer – and spilling valuable water in the process. “You keep to your own bucket.”

Nicolo sighed, and stared down at the bucket of water and contaminated clothes beside it. The question was, then, what needed fresh water more – his clothes, or himself.

He did. He definitely did.

He knelt over the bucket and tipped his head forwards. Cupping as much water as he could in his hands, he poured it through his hair. It was getting long – he’d either have to cut it soon or starting tying it up again. And his beard – as he ran wet fingers through it, he grimaced. He’d always preferred being clean-shaven, but it in the middle of a war that was hardly a priority. Now, however, he had no excuse.

From the corner of his eyes – through the waterfall of water cascading down his face – he could see Yusuf doing the same, scrubbing at his much denser, tightly-curled hair, running his fingers through his much neater beard. Nicolo tugged at his own again, feeling a bit self-conscious. He’d invest in a razor as soon as he was able. He’d tried shaving with a dagger before. It didn’t end well.

Though his tunic still sat there, demanding attention, Nicolo didn’t regret his choice in priorities. His hair was clean and fresh for the first time in too, too long. As someone who had grown up where running water (not to mention the ocean) was readily available for a good scrub, it was the dryness of this land he struggled with the most. He did the best he could, using wet hands to rub himself down, trying to remove as much of the dust, grime, and sweat from his body as he could.

Yusuf finished before him. He was sat cross-legged on his blanket when Nicolo finally wrung his hair dry. Yusuf’s damp hair was gleaming in the faint candlelight, bare-chested with the lightest rivulets of water dripping down. He was too distracted to notice, however. In his hands he was holding a small, leather-bound notebook, presumably pulled from one of the many small bags Yusuf carried with him. It was clearly old and well-worn, pages falling out, other pieces of oversized paper wedged in the folds, the leather scratched and battered.

Nicolo watched, transfixed, as Yusuf unfolded one of the larger scraps of paper. He pulled from between the pages the thinnest, shortest stick of charcoal Nicolo had ever seen, and began to sketch.

After a good few minutes of Nicolo just… watching, Yusuf interrupted the silence. “Those fish guts are going to set into the cloth if you just leave them, you know.” He hadn’t even looked up.

Nicolo ignored him. “You’re an artist?”

Yusuf shrugged, amending some mark he’d made by brushing at the paper with his finger. “A hobby. I was never allowed to pursue it as a career.”

Nicolo fidgeted, not wanting to interrupt, but… “May I?”

Yusuf made the slightest of movements. It seemed a stretch to call it a nod, but Nicolo took it as a sign of assent nonetheless. He scrambled to his feet, moving carefully round to Yusuf’s side.

The image was breathtaking. For all it was on rough paper with the most imprecise pencil, it rivalled all works Nicolo had ever seen in church. “Why on earth did you not pursue this?” Nicolo breathed, transfixed by the way Yusuf’s hands would make the gentlest of movements, make the slightest mark, to bring the picture to life. The delicate way he held the charcoal, contrasting with the boldness of his additions. Every second Nicolo thought he’d reached perfection, but then it just got _better_.

Beside him, Yusuf shrugged, his shoulder knocking against Nicolo’s. “My father was a successful merchant. I was the oldest son. I had a duty.”

It was a familiar story. Nicolo didn’t push any further.

He forced himself to look at the subject of the work, not Yusuf’s motions. A man, a soldier, standing amidst a field of the dead, sword in his hands, sorrow in his eyes. “Who is it?” Nicolo asked, unsure if he was welcome to the answer.

Yusuf’s hand stilled. He turned to look up at Nicolo with an indescribable expression. If he had to try, Nicolo would guess at a mix of horror and disdain. Yusuf just stared at for him a moment, apparently checking the intentions of Nicolo’s question. Finally, in a bland voice, he simply said, “It’s _you_.”

Stunned, Nicolo looked back at the sketch. Was it really? Looking at the face he could see features he recognised, but the figure on the paper was far thinner than he remembered seeing himself, face more shallow. And was his hair really that pale? “It’s been a long time since I saw my reflection,” Nicolo said, trying to convey an apology in his tone. “Your work is stunning, the fault is mine. I’ve… changed, I guess.”

As he continued to scan the sketch – as Yusuf went back to working on it – Nicolo saw more details he hadn’t noticed before. The blood staining the surcoat, the blood dripping from the sword point. The fallen pennant in the background. The closed eyes, twisted mouth. An arrow clenched in his hands. Nicolo frowned, suddenly weary. He moved away, sitting on his own blanket. He stared at his hands in his laps, remembering how they looked, covered in the blood of the men he would have, at one point, called brother. “Is that… is that how you see me?”

The gentle scratching of charcoal on paper paused again. “How I saw you,” Yusuf corrected. A subtle difference, but a significant one. “This was my first sight of you, the first time I dreamed of you. You, walking back from the battlefield outside Arqa, only the dead around you… and carrying so much weight on your shoulders. I guess I wanted to save the image.”

Nicolo couldn’t understand why. He wasn’t sure he wanted to save any part of himself from that time. Silently, he lay back on the blanket. The wooden ceiling above them wasn’t perfect, and the moon shone through the gaps in the beams. “I can understand why you hated me.”

“I still don’t understand how you don’t hate me,” Yusuf countered.

Nicolo turned his head, looking across at the man who, even if passively, had caused him to kill Christians. And sleep in an attic above rotting fish. “To be honest,” Nicolo said, rolling onto his side, once again watching Yusuf’s hands as he sketched, “I don’t think I had felt anything since we reached Antioch. Not fear, not joy, not hatred, not hope… I didn’t feel any of it, not until-”

He cut off. Yusuf stopped sketching, looking up from the paper to frown at him. “Not until what?”

“Not until you made me laugh.”

Yusuf held his gaze, and Nicolo couldn’t look away.

“I don’t think I remember how to you hate you anymore,” Yusuf confessed.

Nicolo smiled at him, blinking lazily. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll remind you how soon enough.”

Yusuf laughed, and it was like a lullaby. Nicolo’s eyes fell closed, and he felt no need to open them again.

“Do you mind if I keep one candle lit?” Yusuf asked, and the world behind Nicolo’s eyelids darkened as candles were, one by one, extinguished. “I would like to keep sketching, for a bit longer.”

“ _Si, va bene,”_ Nicolo muttered, burying his face into the blanket. “I could sleep through a catapult barrage right now…”

Before he drifted off into sleep, he heard something that could have been Yusuf folding away the sketch he’d been working on, and unfolding another sheet to start something new.

“ _Alham saeida, Nicolo_.”

  
***

  
Nicolo stirred before the sun began to shine through the wooden beams, to the sound of bells chiming throughout the town.

Confused, he rolled over, reaching for Yusuf – but the man was already beside him, hand resting on Nicolo’s shoulder.

“Shh, it’s alright, _‘amali_. They call us to prayer. You can sleep for some time yet.”

Trusting him completely, Nicolo closed his eyes, and slowly fell back into a peaceful sleep.

When he rose later, he would find that, some point while he slept, Yusuf had fetched fresh water and cleaned his tunic of all fish guts and other stains.

  
***

  
The Captain stood out amidst the dockside crowd more than even Nicolo did. He was clearly local, to this of the Mediterranean at least, but his clothing was… chaotic.

Nicolo quite liked it.

His personality was even more vibrant.

“Aha!” he yelled with joy as they approached. His arms were outstretched in welcome, grin wide under a huge, bushy beard. “My Maghrebi brother! Come, come, it is good to see you again.”

He was speaking in Sabir, Nicolo realised with a welcome sense of shock. He said as much, as Yusuf was throttled in a hug. “If your use of the merchant’s language is for my benefit, I appreciate it.”

Yusuf sufficiently crushed, the Captain turned his attention to Nicolo, and his smiled widened. Nicolo hadn’t thought that was possible. “Indeed! Good Yusuf here warned me you were Frank, but don’t worry, we can keep it secret,” he said, with an outrageous wink. Before Nicolo could even defend himself – _not a Frank_ – the man was laughing again. “Don’t worry, I jest, I jest. We are friends with all, aboard my ship. Your people buy my wares at a _very_ good price. Besides! My brother here has told me so much about you!”

He slapped Yusuf’s back, and Nicolo bit back a laugh as Yusuf stumbled from the force. “He has, has he?”

Yusuf caught his gaze, and shook his head sombrely.

“Of course! All good things, all good things. I feel blessed to meet you!”

Over the Captain’s shoulder, Yusuf mouthed, _All lies_.

Nicolo would have laughed, but he did know at least one lie Yusuf had told the Captain. “I feel I should warn you, my friend here has probably grossly overstated my skill on a ship. I doubt I will be very useful as a deck hand.”

But the Captain just waved a huge, bejewelled hand. “Ah, no worries, my friend. We carry no other passengers this journey, only bountiful cargo – it is a short trip to Alexandria, and we will be happy for company. You can pay us with your tales, and your company.”

Just as Nicolo started to feel suspicious, the Captain was changing tone again, laughing and elbowing Yusuf in the chest. Yusuf winced, and Nicolo hid a laugh behind a cough. “And of course, it helps to have two trained fighters on board in these seas, yes?”

Ah – not an entirely selfless offer, then. “If we encounter trouble, I will be happy to help,” Nicolo said, hand lightly resting on where his longsword sat at his hip.

The Captain spread his arms wide again, and Nicolo and Yusuf both instinctively stepped back, out of his reach. “Then we have a deal, my friends! Come, let me show you aboard – you have bags? No? Just this? Even better. Come, come! There is a small cabin spare, not much, but I feel it is plenty for you two!”

He led them through a bustling ship, down into the lower deck. Most of the space was open, filled with crates and rolls of fabric, a few barrels. The rear of the ship, however, had been divided into several small rooms. Visible through one door was a spacious room, huge windows providing a beautiful view of the sea, a cushioned pallet bolted to the wall, a small bookshelf generously filled, and a table adorned with bottles of golden liquid.

Yusuf and Nicolo were shown into the room opposite, which was, to say it generously, a cupboard.

“I would ask you to stay here while we cast off,” the Captain said. “No need for you to get under the feet of my men. I will send for you when it is safe!” With one last boisterous slap on Yusuf’s back (Yusuf grabbing the doorframe to steady himself), the Captain was gone. He was barely out of sight before they heard him bellowing orders.

Nicolo looked around the… room. Hooks on the wall, a small window letting in fresh air and seawater. One corner had a piece of wood that could technically be called a table, enough space for maybe two plates. Two stools took up most of the floor space by it. Best of all, there was only one small pallet with a blanket and a pillow. All in all, Nicolo could press his hands against the opposing walls, and still have his arms bent. A man _could_ lie down in the space between the door and the porthole – where the pallet stretched – but it would be a tight fit. And for _two_ men to fit on that pallet…

“‘I feel it is plenty for you two’,” Nicolo mused, repeating the Captain’s word. “What exactly, do you think, he thinks of us?”

Yusuf seemed far less daunted by the size of the room. He’d already hung his bag from one of the hooks, and was testing out the comfort of the pallet. Nicolo didn’t have high hopes. “I honestly don’t know. I could go ask, if you wanted?”

“Don’t you dare.”

Yusuf laughed, and moved to peer out the porthole. “You don’t get sea-sick, do you?”

Nicolo shook his head. “I haven’t yet.”

Yusuf seemed distracted by whatever he could see through the window, so Nicolo tried to make himself at home. They would be sharing this space for three days, if the conditions were good. He hung his bag beside Yusuf’s, and perched on a stool. It was rickety – not somewhere to sit if the waves picked up. “What do you think about Sicily?”

Yusuf turned to face him, his hair haloed by the light shining from the porthole. “Sicily?”

“You did say when we reached port, you would allow me to have input,” Nicolo reminded him wryly. “Sicily is run by Franks, but it was a Muslim Emirate less than ten years ago. We could lay low there for a while. We’d both fit in, for the most part.”

Yusuf leant back against the wall, arms crossed, nodding slowly. “You’re not wrong,” he admitted. “It’s almost perfectly placed between our two homelands. Sicily is not a bad idea.”

His comment reminded Nicolo of a question he’d always wondered. “If you don’t mind my asking, where are you from? I know you’re Maghrebi, but… you’re not from Alexandria, are you?”

“No,” Yusuf said, and Nicolo was sure he heard some longing in his voice. “But I am familiar with the city. No… I’m from further west.”

“Do you want to go there? We could, before we-”

Yusuf was shaking his head before Nicolo could finish. “No, no. There’s nothing for me there. Besides,” he said with the mischievous grin Nicolo enjoyed so much, “I don’t think they’d take too kindly to your presence there.”

The change of tone was abrupt, and so obviously an attempt at a distraction. Nicolo allowed it.

Besides, even if it was merely a joke, it showed that Yusuf hadn’t even considered returning home alone – in the same way that, every time Nicolo pictured returning to Genova, it was with Yusuf by his side.

“What about Genova?” Yusuf asked. “Why not suggest we return there?”

Nicolo couldn’t pretend the idea wasn’t a tempting one, but still impossible. “Like you said, I don’t think they’d be all that welcoming to you.”

“What? But I’m so charming!”

Nicolo cast about for something to throw at him, but there was nothing. He settled for a rude gesture, but Yusuf just beamed at him. “Besides,” Nicolo sighed, leaning back, “It would better for them to think I died a martyr, rather than knowing that I-”

“Absconded with the enemy?”

“Precisely.”

Yusuf ran a hand through his hair. “I am sorry,” he said, settling onto the other stool. In so tight a space, the action pressed them together, legs interlocking. “I am sorry that meeting me has put you in such a position.”

Bemused, Nicolo stared at him. “That isn’t an apology you need to make,” he said. “By rights, I should be buried out there, somewhere, an arrow in my neck, so to let them believe I’ve died isn’t entirely a lie. Besides, I should apologise to _you_ , I shouldn’t _stop_ apologising to you! What I followed to this country, what I brought-”

“What you brought?” Yusuf cut in, voice soft, eyes concerned. “Nicolo, you really don’t see it, do you?”

Yusuf’s hand rested on Nicolo’s, interlocking their fingers. Suddenly wordless, Nicolo shook his head.

For a while, all Yusuf did was look at their hands, at how they fit together. Feeling a patience he had never known before, Nicolo waited for him. “Sometimes it feels like all I’ve ever known, is noise,” Yusuf said, voice soft. If Nicolo was any further away he wouldn’t have heard a word. “I don’t mean literally – though, I have only ever lived in cities. No, it’s… as I grew up, I was caught in a war between what I needed and what I wanted, my father’s voice in one ear and my tutor’s in another, pulled between my family and my dreams. I heard they needed soldiers to defend the Holy Land, and for a moment there was only one voice calling me, and I thought that I would finally have peace. But then I got here, and it was worse, it was so much worse-”

His voice cracked. Nicolo lifted a hand to brush a curl away from where it covered Yusuf’s eyes.

With a breath, Yusuf continued. “Even between battles there was screaming. The wounded don’t stop being wounded in the moments of silence. The cries of people who need help, people who need food, who need a home, so much _noise_ in the way they looked at us, at _me_. The silent voices of those demanding so much, the hope they had, the hope that we then failed-”

He looked up suddenly, rage and sorrow fighting for control of his emotions. “Do you know the first thing Iftikhar ad-Daula did, when he heard you were coming to take the city? He expelled what Christians he could, and poisoned the wells to kill the rest. But poison isn’t like a sword, you can’t point and say _kill them, and them alone_ , it spreads and spreads and we _failed them_. I tried dying, next. I had always been told that we would find peace in death, so I tried that. And,” he said, a burst of laughing tearing itself from his throat, “What do you know, not even that worked!”

Yusuf’s grip on Nicolo’s hand was so tight, he could feel the crescents of Yusuf’s nails cutting into his skin. He didn’t mind.

“And then,” Yusuf continued, “and then I went to sleep, and I saw this man, a man I didn’t recognise, praying before the altar of a God I didn’t believe in. And for the first time in years I _felt peace_. And again, and again, I dreamt of you, and everything else fell silent. To then find you, kill you, _speak_ with you…”

He raised a hand, resting it lightly against Nicolo’s cheek, the softest of touches as if to check the man before him was real, not merely an echo of his dreams. Nicolo leant against it.

“Watching you taught me to feel peace, for the first time in my life,” Yusuf said, whispering the words as if to voice it aloud would shatter everything. “And nothing else has felt real since. Not the noise, not the screaming. Only your certainty, your peace. You came to me in a dream, and I am not sure I have woken since that moment.”

Nicolo looked into Yusuf’s eyes, and knew then he would do anything to keep them shining like they were now – with hope, and love. “When you found me I was broken,” he whispered. “And knowing you fixed me, until I was better than I had even been before.”

Yusuf smiled, and it was beautiful. “Can I try something?” he asked, less hesitant than hopeful.

“ _Yes_.”

It was so tentative, barely a breath against Nicolo’s lips. And then a soft pressure, rough skin against his, a warmth, a gentleness. A wordless promise, an acknowledgement. Barely a moment, but Nicolo knew it would last a lifetime.

Soon, too soon, Yusuf was leaning back. Nicolo threaded his fingers through Yusuf’s curls and pulled him back in for a proper kiss.

Yusuf’s thumbs brushed over Nicolo’s cheekbones, every sensation sending lightning to Nicolo’s core. Their lips shaped each other, breath moving between them, mouths opening as they sought to learn more. Learn what the other felt like, tasted like, _sounded_ like if you bit them gently just _there_ –

They were interrupted by a huge clash, a sound that reverberated through their chests, the links of giant chains crashing together. The anchor was raising.

Nicolo’s heart was racing, and he couldn’t tell if it was from the shock of the sudden noise or… _that_. The reason Yusuf’s lips were parted, the reason his chest was rising and falling with such fervour. The reason he was smiling at Nicolo like he’d never seen something so beautiful. “We’re off,” he said, voice rough from breathlessness.

“So we are,” Nicolo replied, meaning layered. Yusuf didn’t miss it – he laughed, and Nicolo could feel the sound in his chest. “I never actually made it to the Holy City,” Nicolo mused, suddenly realising. Though he’d hardly call it a failed pilgrimage.

“We’ll go back there one day,” Yusuf promised. He took Nicolo’s hands once more, running a thumb over his knuckles. “When the war is over. I’ll show it to you.” And then, “What of Malta?”

The sudden turn threw Nicolo for a loop. “Malta?”

“The situation there is the same as in Sicily,” Yusuf said, “But it’s smaller, further south – it will be longer before the Franks get full control, further from the reach of their armies -”

“Would be quieter,” Nicolo cut in, a smile growing.

Yusuf nodded. His eyes shone with hope. “We’d have time there.”

Considering it, Nicolo looked down. His feet were hooked around Yusuf’s ankles, joined hands resting on their knees. They really did fit so well together. “Malta,” Nicolo said once more, testing the name on his tongue. “I like the sound of that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed. I'm very tempted to write some of their time in Malta, and meeting Andy/Quynh. 
> 
> If anyone is willing to help me with Muslim/Maghrebi culture/history, please let me know. I'd love to write some scenes from Yusuf's perspective, but I'm afraid I'd ruin it with my ignorance.


End file.
